Investing in Nexxa.ai: Bringing Specialized AI to the Industrial Backbone
- George Bandarian
- 45 minutes ago
- 3 min read
The AI conversation has largely focused on consumer applications and white-collar productivity. But the industries that keep the world running, including rail, construction, manufacturing, energy, and critical infrastructure, remain one of the most underpenetrated frontiers for applied AI.
Industrial engineering is one of the last major blank spots in applied AI. These are high-stakes, non-standard workflows where errors are costly, legacy software is deeply entrenched, and the talent gap continues to widen as experienced engineers retire faster than they can be replaced.
This is the gap that Nexxa.ai was built to address.
Led by Philipp Wehn, David Huang, and a deeply technical, industry-native team, Nexxa is bringing specialized AI directly into the tools and workflows industrial engineers already rely on. From our earliest conversations, Philipp and the team stood out for their rare combination of deep industrial domain expertise, operational credibility, and ambition to tackle some of the hardest problems in software.
At Untapped Ventures, this is exactly where we focus: backing agentic technologies that bring real leverage to underserved, mission-critical markets. That conviction is what led us to invest early in Nexxa.ai - and why we’re proud to continue supporting the team as they scale.
Our investment in Nexxa.ai
We first invested in Nexxa at the pre-seed stage, backing the team when they were just beginning to prove that specialized AI could operate directly inside the complex digital environments industrial engineers rely on every day.
In 2024, Nexxa raised a $4.4M pre-seed round driven by a16z speedrun, with participation from institutional and industrial-focused investors including Augment Ventures, Propeller Ventures, Plug and Play, Beat Ventures, SBI, Untapped Ventures, and Cross Atlantic Angels. The company was also selected for a16z speedrun Badge 5, reinforcing early conviction in the team and their approach.
What mattered most to us, however, was what came next. Nexxa quickly translated early validation into real deployments across heavy industry, delivering measurable ROI and fast time to value in environments long considered too complex or too risky to modernize.
This week, Nexxa announced a $9M Seed round, led by Construct Capital, with significant participation from a16z speedrun and continued support from existing investors, including Untapped Ventures. With this round, Nexxa has now raised $14M total.
We chose to re-invest in the Seed round because the team consistently delivered what matters most to us as investors: real customer traction, fast deployment timelines, and clear evidence that their platform creates meaningful operating leverage in complex industrial environments.
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AI that works inside real industrial workflows
Rather than forcing costly “rip-and-replace” transformations, Nexxa’s platform runs on top of existing engineering tools, embedding AI directly into the workflows engineers already use and trust.
At the core of the platform is Nexxa Nitro, a multi-agent orchestration system that allows specialized AI agents to operate safely, explainably, and compliantly inside real production environments. These agents can interpret engineering documents, reason through complex schematics, and execute work directly within thick-client applications like AutoCAD - much like a human engineer would.
This approach is already gaining traction across rail, construction, manufacturing, and critical infrastructure, with enterprise customers including Siemens and Matikon, additional customers under NDA, and availability through the Siemens Xcelerator Marketplace. Nexxa’s forward-deployed engineering model enables teams to see measurable ROI in weeks, without disrupting mission-critical systems.
Why we’re excited to continue backing Nexxa
Nexxa is led by founders who deeply understand both industrial systems and modern AI. CEO and co-founder Philipp Wehn brings years of experience across rail, automotive, and building-technology supply chains, while CTO and co-founder David “DH” Huang adds decades of experience across infrastructure, cybersecurity, and large-scale systems from companies including TSMC and IronKey.
At Untapped Ventures, we back founders building agentic technologies that solve real-world problems in markets that matter. Nexxa exemplifies that mission. We’re proud to have supported the team early, and even more excited to continue backing them as they bring specialized AI into the heart of heavy industry.