ZURICH, Switzerland, May 20, 2026 – AVIAN raised $2.6 million to expand its continuous thermal monitoring systems to detect industrial fires, production losses or insurance-related shutdown risks. Founderful led the pre-seed round, which will support engineering, deployment capacity and expansion beyond wood products into recycling, chemical processing, oil and gas, and maritime operations.
AVIAN was profitable and bootstrapped for two years before raising outside capital. The company expects to surpass $1 million in ARR in 2026.
How AVIAN Works
Industrial operators in Europe and North America face risk from fine dust, friction, electrical faults and aging equipments. AVIAN says some sites that were insurable five years ago now face higher premiums or reduced coverage as insurers reassess operating risk.
Many facilities still rely on periodic thermography, with technicians using handheld cameras during inspections. AVIAN’s system monitors critical assets continuously during the window when abnormal heat can appear before failure.
The system uses thermal cameras to track motors, bearings, conveyors, presses and electrical cabinets. It learns normal heat behavior at each plant, identifies thermal drift and filters routine heat sources before sending alerts to the relevant teams.
Customer Results
AVIAN also generates predictive maintenance reports and provides 24/7 human support. Each alarm event is reviewed and fed back into the models to improve detection across installed sites.
The company reports deployments at about 50 sites across 9 countries. The system has helped prevent more than $50 million in damage from fires and equipment failures over the past two years.
Reported customer results include a 10% annual insurance cost reduction at Kamps Pallet’s Dillwyn sawmill and more than 24 hours of avoided unplanned downtime at Sierra Pacific Industries’ Quincy site. Schilliger Holz has used AVIAN to avoid fires and reduce unscheduled stops. Early detections in Switzerland and Germany helped contain a pellet press fire and an electrical fire near a high-value machine. Early containment protected the asset and avoided up to 18 months of production loss during replacement.
“AVIAN has developed a solution to a problem which probably affects everyone in the industry directly. For us, it is a great partnership as it helps us make our operations much safer and improves the monitoring process. You will never be able to reduce the risk of fires to zero, but you can do everything you can to minimize the danger as much as possible – and AVIAN makes that possible in a simple and straightforward way,” said Ernest Schilliger, CEO Schilliger Holz.
The Team
AVIAN is a 10-person team based in Zurich. The company was founded after a Swiss sawmill saw Hanover’s robotics and AI research in Swiss media and contacted the team about fires, downtime and rising insurance pressure.
“Most operators don’t need another camera. At 3 a.m., they need to know that a bearing is running hot before it ignites the dust around it,” said Drew Hanover, co-founder and CTO of AVIAN. “We bootstrapped the business for two years because we wanted to build something operators actually trusted. We raised with Founderful for one reason: to keep doing that, in more markets, faster, without changing what we are. We spent zero minutes on a deck.”
Alex Stöckl, partner at Founderful added: “Within a year of incorporation, the team at AVIAN already served dozens of manufacturing businesses in the US and Europe, preventing real fire incidents on a daily basis. With their thermal-vision technology, there’s an immediate ROI and a new industrial intelligence layer that unlocks further use cases and value for customers over time – backing them to accelerate their go-to-market and product roadmap was a no-brainer.”
What’s Next
AVIAN’s roadmap has two tracks. The company has worked with insurers to study how they assess industrial risk. Its installed camera fleet can provide risk assessments using live thermal telemetry.
AVIAN Vision extends the platform by using existing CCTV infrastructure to detect smoke and fire. The approach gives facilities wider 24/7 monitoring without replacing current camera systems.
AVIAN says industrial risk assessment has long relied on actuarial tables and historical claims data. The company is developing systems that add real-time operational data to that process, including thermal telemetry, camera-based detection and site-level monitoring.
Source: AVIAN
About AVIAN
AVIAN is a Swiss technology company based in Kuessnacht, Switzerland. The company develops continuous thermal monitoring systems for industrial risk control. Its founding year is unknown. AVIAN started with fire-risk monitoring in wood processing and developed from work with Schilliger Holz, its first customer. Its system uses thermal cameras, AI anomaly detection, alert routing and event history to detect abnormal heat near critical assets. Operators receive alerts by phone, SMS, WhatsApp, email, local PLC systems, web browsers and mobile apps. AVIAN serves sawmills, planer mills, data centers, mining sites, grain handling facilities, recycling plants, pallet manufacturers, biomass operations, food and beverage manufacturers, ports, electric bus depots, lithium refining sites and battery materials facilities. Its services include camera placement, thermal signal processing, zone tuning, alarm filtering, installation planning and support. AVIAN reports more than 50 protected facilities across nine countries.
About Founderful
Founderful is a venture capital firm based in Zurich, Switzerland. The firm was founded in 2019 and invests in pre-seed technology startups, mainly in Switzerland. It works with founders, university-linked startups and students interested in venture capital. Founderful’s focus areas include startups, venture capital, technology and Swiss early-stage companies. The firm also runs Founderful Campus, a program for Swiss university students that provides training, support and initial startup funding.