Gothenburg-based industrial technology startup Digiclean has raised €2.5 million in seed funding in a round co-led by Unconventional Ventures and Almi Invest GreenTech, with participation from S-E Bankens Utvecklingsstiftelse, Impact Shakers, and Feminvest Ventures. The company develops an IoT- and AI-based platform that monitors and automates industrial cleaning processes, enabling manufacturers to optimise chemical use, reduce waste, and improve process control. The funding will be used to continue product development and support the company’s commercial expansion across Sweden and selected European industrial markets.
Before a component can be coated, painted or assembled, it must be perfectly clean. Factories wash parts in large cleaning machines, and the chemistry in those processes determines product quality, uptime and cost. Process chemistry is one of the last unmeasured systems in modern manufacturing. While machines, energy and logistics have been digitised, the chemistry that determines component quality and uptime is still managed by manual sampling and intuition.
“Industrial cleaning is a fundamental part of how factories operate, yet it has remained largely unchanged for decades. We are building the tools needed to make it measurable, optimisable, and aligned with modern efficiency and sustainability requirements. With the incredible support and belief of Unconventional Ventures and Almi Invest GreenTech, we can accelerate this transition across industries,” states Charlotte Stigen Låstberg, CEO and Co-Founder of Digiclean.
The Digiclean platform is already deployed across more than 20 industrial sites in Sweden, including installations with leading automotive and manufacturing companies. Digiclean addresses this through a plug-and-play IoT sensor and AI model that continuously monitors cleaning bath chemistry and automates chemical dosing, replacing manual sampling with real-time data. The platform allows customers to significantly reduce unplanned downtime, optimise resource use across water, chemicals and labour, and improve traceability and compliance. Every process fluid in a factory continuously carries information about product quality, equipment condition and chemical consumption. Digiclean captures it in real time, making a previously invisible layer of production data measurable and actionable.
“At Unconventional Ventures, we look for companies working in places that have been overlooked — where the problem is real, the founder has lived it, and the commercial logic is inseparable from the impact case. Digiclean is all three. Charlotte grew up inside the industrial chemical industry. She knows the problem from the inside out. And every sensor her team installs reduces chemical consumption, wastewater, and CO2 while generating recurring revenue — impact and returns are not in tension here, they are the same thing. That is exactly the kind of company Unconventional Ventures was built to back,” says Alexis Horowitz-Burdick, Partner, Unconventional Ventures.
From an environmental perspective, inefficient cleaning processes contribute to unnecessary chemical waste, excess resource consumption, and avoidable emissions. Digiclean’s approach enables more targeted interventions and supports customers in reducing their operational footprint while maintaining high performance standards.
“Digiclean has done something most early-stage companies struggle with: they have built a technically differentiated product and secured validation from leading industrial customers. The team’s ability to translate a complex technical solution into commercial traction at such an early stage is particularly impressive. Combined with strong unit economics, favourable regulatory tailwinds, and deep domain expertise, we believe Digiclean is exceptionally well positioned to capitalise on a significant market opportunity,” comments Jonathan Lannö, Investment Manager, Almi Invest GreenTech.
Read the orginal article: https://arcticstartup.com/digiclean-raises-e2-5m-seed/
