Insider Brief
- OTee raised €5.3 million in seed funding to expand its software-defined industrial control platform for factories, utilities and other critical infrastructure operations.
- The round was led by North Ventures with participation from Atlas SGR, RunwayFBU, Superangel and Antler, and will fund product development, engineering hires and international expansion.
- OTee’s virtual PLC platform replaces proprietary programmable logic controller hardware with software running on standard hardware, helping customers reduce vendor lock-in, lower costs and maintain deterministic, safety-critical control as AI is added to industrial systems.
Norwegian industrial software company OTee has raised €5.3 million in seed funding as it looks to expand its software-defined control platform for factories, utilities and other industrial operations.
The round was led by North Ventures, with participation from Atlas SGR and existing investors RunwayFBU, Superangel and Antler, accordinng to the company.
The company plans to use the new capital to expand its engineering team and support broader adoption among industrial operators, system integrators and hardware partners as demand grows for software-defined industrial automation. It will also go toward product development and international expansion as it scales its virtual PLC platform, which is designed to replace traditional proprietary industrial control hardware with software running on standard off-the-shelf systems.
“Industrial control is one of the last major infrastructure layers still tied to proprietary hardware,” co-founder and CEO Henrik Pedersen said in the announcement. “As industry adopts software-defined control and probabilistic AI, the control layer that governs physical operations must remain deterministic, predictable, and safe.”
Industrial control systems manage physical operations across sectors including energy, manufacturing, logistics, water and utilities. Most still rely on programmable logic controllers, or PLCs, which are often tied to proprietary hardware and closed vendor ecosystems that have changed little in decades.
OTee said its platform allows customers to run virtual PLCs on open hardware rather than vendor-specific systems, reducing dependence on proprietary equipment while maintaining the deterministic performance required for critical physical operations.
According to the company, its software helps customers reduce vendor lock-in, lower hardware costs, standardize control systems across multiple sites and deploy updates faster without compromising safety or reliability.
OTee said this becomes increasingly important as companies layer probabilistic AI systems on top of physical operations. While AI can improve decision-making and efficiency, the control layer that governs machines and infrastructure still needs fixed, reliable behavior.
The technology is already deployed across energy, utilities and manufacturing customers, according to the company. OTee said customers are using the platform both to modernize existing infrastructure and to create a safer foundation for integrating AI into real-world industrial operations.
Image credit: OTee
