one.five, a Hamburg-based company building AI-powered solutions for packaging product development, has raised €14 million in Series A funding to scale its proprietary AI platform and data foundation.
The round was led by Dr Hans Riegel Holding (shareholder HARIBO), with participation from 212 NexT, Symbia VC (Family Office), Btomorrow Ventures, KIMPA Impact (multi-family office), Zubi Capital and existing investors Speedinvest, Planet A, Green Generation Fund, Climentum Capital, Revent, and WEPA.
Martin Weber, co-founder and Managing Director of one.five, noted, “Too many packaging products fail before they ever reach the market. New funding allows us to further expand our AI-powered Co-Pilot and scale our first platform product, the “Product Market Fit Compass”, which was specifically designed for technology providers such as paper manufacturers.
“It has been validated already as our customers have used the platform to approach brand owners more strategically and make internal material development significantly more efficient without having to build large in-house R&D teams.”
one.five was founded in 2020 by Martin Weber, former CFO of vertical indoor farming unicorn Infarm, and Claire Hae-Min Gusko, previously Head of Business Strategy at Infarm. It aims to accelerate the transformation of the global packaging supply chain through AI-driven innovation.
According to the company, its proprietary platform applies AI to packaging product development, thereby shortening time to market and enabling packaging players to launch more solutions faster and more efficiently.
The company aims to solve the product-market-fit problem in packaging. It notes that global reliance on plastic is still significantly high, despite increased climate commitments. It reported that only an estimated 15-20% of global packaging can be classified as sustainable, while less than 15% of plastic packaging is recycled, and nearly half continues to be disposed of in landfills.
The German startup also notes that on average, around 60% of R&D spending in the packaging industry is utilised towards products that never achieve commercial success. This challenge is more prevalent in the primary packaging for fast-moving consumer goods (FMCG), due to low margins, high volumes, volatile consumer preferences, and regulatory changes.
One.five aims to address this problem by embedding product-market fit directly into the development process. The company claims that its AI-driven platform optimises this process by translating all success-critical factors, from technical performance and regulatory compliance to cost targets and consumer acceptance at the point of sale, into data-driven requirement profiles. This enables R&D teams to develop products that are market-ready by design.
The company’s core offering is the Product Market Fit Compass, a platform product that allows paper and coating manufacturers to benchmark their product portfolios against real brand requirements. This helps them identify and assess the products that have the highest chances of market success. The platform also defines concrete development targets, enabling teams to develop new products aligned with customer demand.
“Our platform helps companies focus on solutions that have a clear path to market and revenue. In early pilot projects with paper manufacturers, we’ve seen customers engage with brands faster, reduce failed developments and shorten time-to-market significantly. In these cases, we’re expecting a return on investment of around five times of the invested capital within the first year. This is exactly the kind of commercial impact we want to scale with this round,” added Claire Hae-Min Gusko, co-founder of one.five.
The company plans to use this capital to scale its platform, generate additional proprietary data through experiments and commercial material deployments, and expand to new customer groups.
In 2025, the company introduced two alternative packaging solutions developed using its own AI platform: Bluemorph, a recyclable high-barrier packaging solution for freshness and protection requirements, and Glassleaf, a transparent, recyclable packaging made from bio-based materials.
The company notes that early customers, including BioSun (in collaboration with Lorentzen & Sievers as distribution partner), foodie & friends, Rawito, Tactic Games, Nature Cosmétique, JUNG, and UPM Raflatac, have launched these materials in real market applications.
It is also planning to launch platform products for packaging converters and brand owners in the second half of 2026.
Currently, one.five works with paper manufacturers, including clients such as Starkraft, a business unit of Zellstoff Pöls AG (Austria), and Grünperga Papier (Germany). It is also engaged with packaging converters and global FMCG brands.
Read the orginal article: https://www.eu-startups.com/2026/01/hamburg-based-one-five-raises-e14-million-to-solve-the-product-market-fit-problem-in-packaging/
