AVIAN raises USD $2.6 million to expand thermal monitoring

AVIAN has raised USD $2.6 million in a pre-seed funding round led by Founderful. The Zurich-based company will use the money to expand its thermal monitoring business.

It sells an always-on monitoring system that detects overheating equipment and other early signs of fire risk at industrial sites, including sawmills, recycling plants, mines, chemical processing facilities, oil and gas operations, and maritime settings.

After two years as a profitable, bootstrapped business, AVIAN has now taken external funding. Its system has been deployed at about 50 sites across nine countries, and the company is on track to surpass USD $1 million in annual recurring revenue in 2026.

AVIAN is targeting industrial operators facing rising insurance costs and tougher underwriting standards as aging equipment, electrical faults, friction, and dust increase the risk of fire and breakdowns. Its model combines thermal cameras with software that tracks heat patterns in specific equipment such as motors, bearings, conveyors, presses, and electrical cabinets.

Instead of relying on periodic checks with handheld thermal cameras, the platform continuously monitors equipment and flags changes that may point to an impending failure. It also provides automated maintenance reporting and around-the-clock human support.

Customer impact

Over the past two years, AVIAN says its system has helped prevent more than USD $50 million in damage from fires and equipment failures. It cited examples in Switzerland and Germany where early detection limited the impact of fires near valuable machinery and production lines.

Kamps Pallet cut annual insurance costs by 10% at its Dillwyn sawmill after installing the system, according to AVIAN. Sierra Pacific Industries has also avoided more than 24 hours of unplanned downtime at its Quincy site over the past 12 months, the company said.

Schilliger Holz is among the customers using the technology in wood processing, AVIAN's main market. The company now plans to expand further into recycling, chemical processing, oil and gas, and maritime operations.

"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, Chief Executive Officer of Schilliger Holz.

Profitable growth

The startup employs 10 people in Zurich. The business began after a large Swiss sawmill approached founder Drew Hanover, following reports about his robotics and AI research, and asked for help with fire incidents, downtime, and insurer pressure.

That background shaped a product focused less on selling hardware and more on giving plant operators immediate warning when a component begins to overheat. AVIAN argues that industrial sites need earlier alerts in the hours before a fault becomes a fire or causes a shutdown.

"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 Chief Technology Officer 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," Hanover said.

Founderful's investment adds backing from a Swiss pre-seed specialist at a time when industrial risk monitoring is drawing more attention from operators and insurers. Part of AVIAN's work has focused on understanding how underwriters assess risk and how live thermal data could support site-level assessments.

It is also extending the product beyond thermal monitoring through AVIAN Vision, which uses existing CCTV systems to detect smoke and fire without replacing installed camera infrastructure.

"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," said Alex Stöckl, Partner at Founderful.