Porto-based AI startup Sybilion has raised $4.2 million (about €3.6 million) in seed funding to develop a decision intelligence platform designed to help industrial companies respond faster to volatile global markets.
The round was co-led by VentureFriends and Semapa Next, and comes only months after the company secured a $600,000 pre-seed round co-led by Vanagon Ventures and EWOR.
Founded in 2021, Sybilion is building what it describes as a “decision layer” for industrial companies, a system that connects external market signals with internal operational exposure. The platform analyzes more than one trillion external risk factors, including commodity prices, freight rates, weather anomalies, electricity futures, macroeconomic indicators, and global trade flows.
The company says industrial firms often rely on spreadsheets, fragmented analyst reports, and instinct to make billion-euro procurement and pricing decisions. In volatile markets, even a small timing error can erode margins significantly, with a three to five percent miscalculation on a $200 million cost base potentially translating into millions in lost profitability.
Sybilion’s approach identifies which external signals materially affect a company’s cost structure and product portfolio, linking them directly to operational decision-making. Instead of delivering isolated forecasts, the platform structures the decision moment itself by clarifying options, trade-offs, and quantified risk boundaries so procurement, finance, and sales teams can align earlier.
The company was founded by Dr. Bjol R. Frenkenberger, Nuno Barros, Jonas Falkner, and Friedrich Weninger, combining backgrounds in machine learning, industrial operations, and academic research on decision-making under uncertainty.
Over the past year, the startup reports growing annual recurring revenue to the high six figures with zero churn and no dedicated sales team, as early customers adopt the platform to support procurement timing, pricing alignment, and export allocation decisions tied to global commodity and logistics markets.
With the new capital, Sybilion plans to expand its Sybilion Connect integrations so recommendations can flow directly into customer workflows and to develop agentic planning capabilities that help industrial teams determine the next best move under uncertain market conditions.
KEY QUOTES:
“Industrial companies do not lack data. They lack clarity about which signals truly matter and when to commit. Our goal is to give decision-makers the information advantage so they can turn external world dynamics into confident action before uncertainty becomes cost.”
Dr. Bjol R. Frenkenberger, CEO And Co-Founder Of Sybilion
“Industrial companies are being forced to make larger decisions on shorter timelines as volatility becomes the norm. We’re excited to support Bjol and the team as they become the decision layer for manufacturing.”
Apostolos Apostolakis, Founding Partner At VentureFriends
“We were impressed by what Bjol and the team at Sybilion have built in a short period of time. Sybilion delivers clear, measurable value to industrial customers, addressing a fundamental need for decision confidence in an increasingly volatile supply chain environment. We are pleased to support the founders as a long-term partner as they continue to scale the business.”
Grégoire Viat, Principal At Semapa Next
“Bjol is one of the most fascinating founders I’ve been fortunate enough to meet. He is a piano prodigy, a builder, an academic, a leader. With Sybilion, he managed to build the largest dataset of time-series data I have seen to date and orchestrates it in a way that gives industrial teams a decision advantage no one else can offer. Similar to Bjol, Sybilion is one of a kind. Their technology is built like a musical masterpiece, they are growing fast, and Bjol has assembled a unique team that would have never come together were it not for his leadership.”
Daniel Dippold, CEO And Founder Of EWOR
