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Belgian food technology company Polysense has raised $10.7 million in an oversubscribed seed funding round to accelerate the rollout of its AI-powered quality control platform across global food manufacturing operations.
The investment, led by Felix Capital, with participation from Fortino Ventures, Syndicate One and several angel investors, comes as food manufacturers increasingly invest in automation and artificial intelligence to improve efficiency, reduce waste and manage rising production costs.
Headquartered in Ghent, Polysense has developed an AI-native quality control and process optimisation platform that uses real-time computer vision and synthetic data models to inspect products on production lines continuously. Rather than relying on periodic sampling, the system analyses every product as it moves through production and automatically adjusts processing parameters when quality begins to drift.
The company says the technology enables manufacturers to identify defects before they result in significant product losses, helping improve yields while reducing food waste.
CEO and co-founder Yarne De Munck said: “The past 12 months have been incredible. We went from early pilots to live deployments with some of the largest food manufacturers in the world, and they are growing their rollouts. The food industry has been waiting for a solution to this problem.”
The latest funding follows a $2.2 million investment secured just over a year ago and marks a period of rapid commercial growth for the company. Polysense has expanded from early European deployments to installations in the US and the Middle East, with customers including potato processor Agristo, frozen vegetable producer Darta and bakery manufacturer Poppies Bakeries. Its technology is now operating across vegetable, potato, bakery, confectionery and packaging production lines.
According to data collected by Polysense, one European potato processor has reduced peeling time by 45% through automated monitoring and process adjustments, while a bakery manufacturer improved production yield by automatically optimising oven temperatures in real time.
The investment reflects growing interest in digital technologies designed to tackle one of food manufacturing’s biggest operational challenges. Eurostat estimates that food and beverage manufacturing accounts for 19% of food waste generated across the European Union. Manufacturers must contend with constant variation in raw materials, including moisture content, density and other product characteristics, which can make it difficult to maintain consistent quality using fixed machine settings.
Polysense’s platform combines continuous inline inspection, production analytics and automated machine control to create what the company describes as a self-optimising production system. By continuously measuring product quality and automatically adjusting equipment settings, the platform aims to minimise waste before defects become visible.
Chief technology officer and co-founder Lucas Van Dijck said: “For the first time, food manufacturers have a system that inspects every single product on the line in real time and automatically corrects the process when something drifts.”
The new capital will be used to expand the platform’s capabilities across additional stages of food production, accelerate customer deployments and grow the company’s engineering, sales and customer success teams as it targets wider international expansion.
