Exploring Europe’s push to take AI off the screen and onto the factory floor — TFN

Might you think about plugging ChatGPT right into a robotic and setting it free on a manufacturing unit ground?

For Simone Di Somma, founder and chief govt of Milan-based Cyberwave, it’s a query that will get to the guts of why synthetic intelligence (AI) is a lot more durable to construct for the bodily world. 

Factories and warehouses run on processes {that a} general-purpose mannequin is aware of nothing about, and in an surroundings the place machines can break and other people can get harm, there’s little room for error. 

“That’s why you want the infrastructure to attach AI with the true world,” Di Somma tells Tech Funding Information on stage through the Wave by Vento convention in Turin, Italy, this week. 

Alongside fellow Italian entrepreneur Elisa Seghetti, co-founder and CEO of London-based Saturn Dynamics, Di Somma was talking on a panel titled “Atoms Are Again,” which explored what occurs as AI strikes off the display screen and into the bodily world. And, in fact, what it takes to construct that future from Europe.

For Di Somma, Europe’s benefit lies within the options which have lengthy set it aside, and it begins on the manufacturing unit ground.

Producing higher 

“Folks around the globe usually are not shopping for our merchandise for the volumes, for the worth,” Di Somma says. As a substitute, he argues, it’s “for the heritage, for the standard, for the story that’s round our product.”

It’s a pointed argument at a time wherein China now accounts for more than a quarter of the world’s manufactured items, with Europe’s share falling behind. However the issue, Di Somma suggests, comes all the way down to making an attempt to compete on value. 

“Within the final 20 years in Europe, we’ve got adopted a means of manufacturing issues that was caught to manufacturing effectivity – effectivity, effectivity, effectivity,” he says. “If we go down that path, we are going to lose to China.”

As a substitute, Di Somma sees demand shifting in direction of fewer merchandise which might be extra priceless and extra personalised, and factors to Ferrari for example. “It’s not producing extra, but it surely’s producing higher,” he says.

The catch is that almost all factories aren’t constructed to alter rapidly. “With a view to produce higher, you want new methods to reconfigure your manufacturing unit in days, not in years,” Di Somma explains. “We have to make our manufacturing traces software-defined, AI-defined.”

That’s the place Cyberwave is available in. The startup, which Di Somma co-founded in 2025 after promoting his earlier firm, Askdata, to SAP, connects robots, sensors and industrial tools from completely different producers to a single platform. 

Engineers can basically take a look at modifications on a digital copy of the machines first, then push them to the true {hardware} as soon as they work.

Cyberwave raised €7 million in October 2025 in a spherical led by United Ventures, with participation from Vento. 

The push for extra worth over quantity is an concept that echoed throughout the convention. 

Jony Ive,  the British designer finest recognized for his work at Apple, mentioned on the stage earlier within the day that “it’s very laborious to make one thing that’s new and completely different, and its newness is a consequence of it being higher.” He was discussing the Ferrari Luce he designed with the carmaker.

A lot of what Cyberwave does is determined by simulation. Di Somma says the corporate places round 80% of its price range into it, as a result of it lets groups take a look at modifications safely earlier than something touches an actual machine. “Simulation is a sport changer,” he provides. 

A flight simulator for robots

That’s the place Seghetti’s Saturn Dynamics is available in. Based in 2025, the London-based startup builds a generative world mannequin. It creates sensible, physics-aware environments the place robots can study and practise earlier than they ever attain an actual manufacturing unit ground. 

It has been described as a flight simulator, however for robots, and goals to deal with a spot that Seghetti has noticed within the area. 

Giant language fashions discovered from trillions of phrases freely accessible on-line, however there isn’t a equal web of robotic actions, so bodily AI corporations need to both gather real-world demonstrations or generate their very own. 

However constructing a basis mannequin from Europe comes with its personal challenges, Seghetti explains, with US labs commanding way more capital and computing energy. 

The answer, much like what Di Somma has described, isn’t making an attempt to outspend them.

“Essentially, what we’ve got finished is we’ve got modified the economics of the issue,” Seghetti says, including that the workforce is “not making an attempt to win throughout all domains from begin.”

Saturn’s mannequin, she explains, was constructed on an environment friendly structure from the outset, which suggests each greenback the corporate raises can go additional.

Simulation nonetheless has its limits, nevertheless. Seghetti says it really works effectively for scaling up fashions however can nonetheless fall quick on fine-grained precision, although the physics is catching up rapidly. Two years in the past, she says, world fashions might solely simulate inflexible objects. And now, they’re beginning to deal with mushy ones too.

For the businesses shopping for robots, simulation can be a option to sustain with a market shifting at pace. 

“Any robotic goes to grow to be 100 instances quicker and higher in 5 years,” Seghetti says. “In the event you lock your self into the prevailing vendor, you’re mainly locking your self into an organization that in two years doesn’t appear to be it did.”

The place Europe nonetheless has an edge 

Europe’s funding image stays a sticking level. Round 70% of late-stage European deep-tech funding comes from non-European traders, in response to Dealroom. However at Wave, the message from founders and traders was extra about doubling down on the place Europe already has as an edge. 

“You probably have an amazing challenge and also you’re credible and chronic, you will get as a lot cash right here as virtually anyplace,” Bending Spoons CEO Luca Ferrari mentioned in a separate session. Vento’s Diyala D’Aveni made an identical case, arguing that Europe has already produced world-class expertise and that the larger hole is perception and ambition.

For Di Somma, that comes all the way down to tradition. Europe’s coverage framework is “very risk-averse,” he says. “We should always actually consider the builders as the brand new heroes of this period.”

Beginning has by no means been simpler, he provides. “However then to complete merchandise and tasks is tremendous troublesome.” With its industrial heritage, its engineers and a brand new era of founders constructing on the intersection of AI and the bodily world, Europe could effectively have what it takes – if it’s prepared to see it by.