Juna AI

Speaking at Hinterland of Things this week on a topic that I think will matter a lot for Europe: Physical AI. AI is moving beyond software and into the physical world. Autonomous machines. Intelligent robotics. Industrial systems that sense, decide and act in real environments. For Europe, this is a question of industrial competitiveness: We have deep manufacturing expertise, strong engineering, industrial infrastructure, and thousands of hidden champions that understand complex physical processes better than anyone else. The opportunity is to combine that knowledge with AI systems that are safe, reliable and useful in real operations. Physical AI becomes interesting where software meets the messiness of the real world: incomplete data, changing conditions, safety constraints, legacy systems, and decisions with operational consequences. That starts with context. In the physical world, data reflects machines, processes, constraints, edge cases, safety rules and domain knowledge. Without that context, AI remains an interface on top of information. With it, AI can help understand, improve and operate industrial systems. Trust also cannot be added later. Physical AI will only scale if security, access control, auditability and deployment flexibility are built in from day one. Industrial companies need to know where data flows, who can access what, and why a system made a recommendation. Physical AI also has to be built around the people closest to the process. The goal is to give operators, engineers and plant managers a sharper view of what is happening, help them detect weak signals earlier, and support faster decisions when dashboards are not enough. Looking forward to discussing this on the Founders Stage in the “State of Physical AI” panel, together with Lukas Leitner and Sophia Tran. If you are going to Hinterland of Things, let’s meet! #Hinterland26 Founders Foundation gGmbH

Can agents do actual science? Two of our AI engineers have put together a hands-on workshop to find out.   Nima and Vasu are running an interactive session with BLISS e.V. on using LLMs as "heuristic scientists": models that generate candidate strategies, turn them into runnable code, test them against a real objective, and improve from the feedback.   You'll build your own small discovery loop by the end. And you'll get into the messy parts: when a clever prompt is enough and when you actually need to train something, how to keep the output interpretable instead of a black box, and where human judgment still has to stay in the loop.   Bring a laptop and we'll bring pizza!   📅 Wednesday 3 June, 18:00 📍 TU Berlin, Marchstraße 23, Room 0.011  ~2 hours, then networking with the Juna and BLISS crowds.   Register: https://lnkd.in/dfyK-sRM

Some personal news: after five wonderful years in venture capital, I'm moving to the operator side and have joined Juna AI as Chief of Staff! Very excited to join Matthias, Christian and the team at Juna, building AI agents for heavy industry. Already feel lucky to be working alongside this brilliant, kind, and fast-moving group. Huge thank you to the Planet A team for the trust and support over the years, and to the founders and friends across venture who made these years so special. I'll carry a lot from this chapter. The good news is I'm staying in the Berlin climate world, so hoping our paths will continue to cross! We're at a wild moment where AI is unlocking capabilities beyond what we could have imagined a few years, months, sometimes days ago. Am pumped to get a front row seat to pushing it into the physical world, where it can have real impact. Let's gooo! Big thanks to Nick, Jan Christoph, Tobias, Lena, Fridtjof, Christian, Christian, Sam, Kim, Sarah, Siyana, Alexander, Niha, Ulrike, Aina, Benedikt, Anastasia as well as all the Planet-A alumni and venture pals who made this chapter so wonderful 💚

Harmonic's Hot 25 list for Q2 2026. A few companies showed up for the second quarter in a row which usually means theres some investor interest and conviction. Keep an eye out for these companies! 7AI: https://7ai.com/careers Aaru: https://aaru.com/careers Accordance: https://lnkd.in/grhy2SBT Brain Co.: https://brain.co/join Claim Health: https://lnkd.in/gEVqcC3T Cogent: https://lnkd.in/gnh_bqxN Day AI: https://lnkd.in/gcs_MbGr DualEntry: https://lnkd.in/gQexp7Fv Dust: https://lnkd.in/gHsiPsch FLORA: https://lnkd.in/g-Sv8ytz Gradient Labs: https://lnkd.in/gafX6VzR Hadrius: https://lnkd.in/gWGtBUJr Juna AI: https://lnkd.in/gjDhbaYT Medra: https://lnkd.in/g6Jw8VJw OpenRouter: https://lnkd.in/geyanUEv Pace: https://lnkd.in/gMijqXpb Paid: https://lnkd.in/gY_AQTnY Parallel Web Systems: https://lnkd.in/gKwCUBth Peec AI: https://peec.ai/careers Phia: https://lnkd.in/gRfeD2az Resolve AI: https://resolve.ai/careers Runlayer: https://lnkd.in/g5gWdqN5 Salient: https://lnkd.in/g_xWaWQa Sola: https://lnkd.in/gNSZqadF Stacks: https://stacks.ai/careers Give me a follow for weekly updates🫰 Disclaimer: I’m not affiliated with these companies nor am I hiring for these roles. Just sharing the latest on interesting companies, news, and opportunities with my network!

We're hiring: People & Culture Manager 🏭 Juna AI is building AI agents that run factories and we need someone to build the team behind it. As our first dedicated People & Talent hire, you'll own everything: recruiting across engineering and commercial roles, setting up HR from scratch, and shaping the culture of a company that's scaling from ~20 to 100+ people. This isn't a support function. It's a foundational role with direct access to the founding team and real ownership over how we grow. What we're looking for: → 3+ years in recruiting/HR, ideally in a startup or high-growth tech environment → You've built people processes from zero, not just inherited them → Solid understanding of German labor law → High-ownership mentality: you see a gap, you fill it We're backed by Kleiner Perkins and Norrsken VC, based in Berlin, and working on-site with some of the most demanding industries in the world: chemicals, cement, paper, steel. If you want to shape how a company is built — not just join one — we'd love to hear from you. 📍 Berlin | On-site | Full-time #hiring #peopleandculture #startup #berlin #ai #juna

We are proud to be named a leading Industrial AI vendor across two major Gartner research publication: 🔹 Innovation Guide for AI Agents (January 2026): Juna AI is named as a leading Industrial AI vendor alongside the world's biggest AI agent companies. Gartner highlights our focus on agentic plant operations, positioning us as one of the key players bringing agentic AI to the factory floor. 🔹 Hype Cycle for Discrete Manufacturing Technologies, 2025: Juna AI is listed as a Sample Vendor in the emerging "Machine Customers in Manufacturing" category — a transformational technology where autonomous systems make operational decisions, manage resources, and act on behalf of the factory. We're incredibly excited about this recognition, because it validates the work we've invested in the past years. Every day, our team works to make AI accessible, safe, and genuinely valuable for manufacturing companies. Not as a science project. Not as a proof-of-concept that never leaves the lab. But as technology that runs in real production environments, delivers measurable results, and earns the trust of operators and plant managers. Being recognized by Gartner — twice — tells us we're on the right track. It's a proof point for the work we're putting in, and for every customer who trusted us early. If you're in manufacturing and want to see what agentic AI actually looks like in production, let's talk. #ManufacturingAI #AIAgents #IndustrialAI #Gartner #AgenticAI #JunaAI #FactoryOS #Industry40

Manufacturing is entering a decade where complexity is outpacing the industry's ability to manage it. Juna's Founder Matthias Auf der Mauer wrote about this in Forbes, explaining why AI is no longer optional for industrial competitiveness. The highlights: → ~38% of global energy is consumed by manufacturing. Small efficiency gains = massive impact. → Up to 40% of experienced operators retiring in the next decade. Their knowledge can't just walk out the door. → AI has the potential for double-digit productivity improvements — when it's designed for real factory conditions. Read the full piece: https://lnkd.in/dUQWjaTT #Manufacturing #AI #AgenticAI #IndustrialAI

We started Juna two years ago with a simple conviction: factories can be radically more efficient, more profitable, and more sustainable – at the same time. Today, we're launching Juna’s Agentic Factory OS – The AI Platform to get more out of your factory. Here's what we built: 💾 A deep technology stack purpose-built for industrial operations — a semantic data layer, domain-specific optimization models, and an orchestration engine that ties it all together. 👾 Autonomous AI agents that plan production schedules, optimize process control, manage resources and energy, and automate engineering workflows — 24/7, across every shift. 💬 Factory Chat — a new way for operators and managers to interact with their production data in natural language. No more digging through dashboards. Ask your factory a question, get an answer in seconds. 🏗️ An Agent Builder that lets your teams design and deploy their own operational AI agents in self-service. The opportunity in manufacturing is massive. A few percentage points of improvement in throughput, yield, or energy efficiency translate into millions in bottom-line impact. But most factories still plan in spreadsheets, adjust processes based on gut feeling, and operate in silos. We're changing that. Not with another dashboard. With an agentic operating system that understands production logic, respects physical constraints, and improves continuously. We're just getting started. 🔗 Read our launch article (link in comments) #Manufacturing #IndustrialAI #Industry40 #Sustainability #JunaAI