Vienna-based Elio, an AI-powered eco-design software platform, has secured €1.9 million in pre-Seed funding to tackle embedding sustainability into the process design phase in manufacturing – before production begins.
The funding round was led by Ananda Impact Ventures, with participation from industry leaders Stefan Oschmann (former CEO of Merck) and Andreas Treichl (former CEO of Erste Group). Elio is also backed by Cerulean, a pre-Seed AI fund, and Overview Capital, a U.S.-based climate fund, as well as syndicate groups from We\R and RHEINEST/N&V Capital.
“Our goal is to end sustainability as an afterthought,” says Co-founder and CEO Kami Krista. To Krista, scientists and process engineers are “some of the most powerful yet overlooked agents of the sustainable transition. Today, these operators are being asked to solve sustainability challenges without the tools or expertise to do it. Elio empowers them to make more informed, sustainable decisions in minutes — not months.”
Founded in 2021 by Kami Krista, a bioengineer and former pharmaceutical consultant, and Kamil Mroczek, a serial tech entrepreneur, Elio integrates sustainability into the process design, empowering scientists and process engineers to make better eco-design decisions early on in production.
According to Elio, sustainability in manufacturing is usually treated as a box-ticking exercise, addressed long after the most critical decisions have been made. Leveraging AI and large language models (LLMs), Elio enables process engineers and scientists to quickly evaluate and select sustainable inputs – like raw materials, packaging, synthesis methods and equipment – during the early stages of product design.
Unlike traditional sustainability tools focused on post-production reporting, Elio integrates sustainability directly into the design workflow. This approach turns sustainability into an active design consideration rather than a metric addressed after manufacturing processes have been developed, tested, and upscaled.
The European Parliamentary Research Service estimates that 80% of the total environmental impact of a product is determined during the manufacturing process design phase, long before production begins at scale. These early design decisions then impact processes that run at scale, and aggregate to a rising environmental cost.
Elio argues that this is especially urgent in the pharmaceutical industry, where they are focusing their initial efforts.
Upcoming EU regulations, including the Deforestation Regulation (2024), the Corporate
Sustainability Due Diligence Directive (2025), and the Packaging and Packaging Waste Revision (2030), are increasing pressure on companies to integrate sustainability—or face significant financial and reputational risks.
“Sustainability is no longer a nice thing to do — it’s becoming the law,” Krista explains. “Companies that don’t adapt risk falling behind in a market that is evolving towards eco-design.”
Elio leverages AI and LLMs to analyse a wide range of data sources —such as life cycle assessments, industry reports, and supplier databases — and generate complex sustainability profiles for over 15k consumable process inputs. Users can compare different input materials, packaging, and equipment to find the most sustainable options that fit their manufacturing process design.
“By empowering design teams to rapidly explore and assess sustainable options for manufacturing processes — whether it’s optimizing heat and water usage, finding alternatives to petrochemical ingredients, or reducing packaging waste, Elio not only accelerates decarbonization efforts but also helps companies build more resilient and proactive supply chains. This is the kind of impact we’re proud to support,” says Alina Bassi, Investment Manager at Ananda Impact Ventures.
The Elio team has already partnered with several companies in the last year to refine their approach, most notably a Swiss sustainability-focused contract development and manufacturing organisation (CDMO) called ten23 health.
Alissa Monk, Sustainability Lead for ten23 health, expressed a need for companies to automate the “arduous task” of assessing product sustainability. “No other software on the market takes a holistic view of environmental impact,” she says. Using Elio “allowed sustainability to be directly embedded into the way we operate. All employees, most with no sustainability expertise, were able to seamlessly integrate the tool.”
While Elio is starting in pharmaceutical, its founders plan to expand into heavy manufacturing industries like chemicals, glass, and plastics.
“We’re not just creating a better design tool — we’re creating a paradigm shift in how industries approach sustainability,” says Krista. “It’s one thing to set targets, another to take action. Our vision is a world where every product and manufacturing design choice can seamlessly be optimized for sustainability from day one.”
Read the orginal article: https://www.eu-startups.com/2025/02/elio-secures-e1-9-million-to-transform-sustainable-manufacturing-with-ai-driven-eco-design/
