Nexxa.ai Inc. announced today that it has raised $9 million in seed funding led by Construct Capital, with significant participation from a16z and existing investors, to help heavy industry engineers modernize their software stack.

Launched in 2024, the company builds specialized AI agents for heavy industries and engineers who design rail networks, factories, construction projects, heavy machinery, transportation systems and more. Nexxa said many rely on fragmented ecosystems of homegrown software and manual processes to get work done.

Instead of replacing existing engineering tools, Nexxa said, its platform sits on top of existing ecosystems to support engineers in modernizing core infrastructure.

“Everyone talks about AI disrupting white-collar work,” said co-founder and Chief Executive Philipp Wehn. “The real opportunity is strengthening the backbone of the economy.”

Wehn explained that today’s world is being built on the back of native AI systems, which are becoming more integrated and modernized. “America is in a race to rebuild heavy industry,” he added.

Nitro, Nexa’s multi-agent orchestration platform, enables the company’s engineers to specialize and deliver highly resilient, complex AI into the core of heavy-industry workflows.

The heavy industry engineering sector market is vast. The global market estimated to be about $1.9 trillion to $2.1 trillion in 2023 to 2024, growing toward $3.2 trillion in 2031, according to a report from Cognitive Market Research.

The market itself is evolving rapidly under the influence of digital transformation from the internet of things, robotics, AI, big data and cloud technologies. Together, these processes are better known as “Industry 4.0,” a revolution bringing about automation, high-speed data exchange and real-time decision-making. That’s leading to greatly enhanced production through data-driven insights and improved human-machine collaboration.

Nexxa said it sees the industrial base as balanced at an inflection point, where industry-specific AI can enable agents to handle nonstandard, high-complexity work with heavy industry for humans. Nitro orchestrates agents through a rule-based management console, keeping work compliant and explainable, while engineers oversee and accelerate missions.

The company has already signed on with multiple big industry enterprise partners, including Siemens AG, Matikon Group and others that are still under nondisclosure agreements. The platform is also available through the Siemens Xcelerator Marketplace.

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