In industries where a single customer order can involve thousands of technical specifications, pricing decisions and engineering requirements, preparing a sales proposal can become almost as complex as building the product itself. Munich based AI company Atira is targeting this largely manual process with a $15 million seed round aimed at automating industrial sales engineering and helping manufacturers respond to customer requests faster.
The funding round was led by Accel, with participation from UVC, Fortino and Booom, alongside industry investors including Ann Kristin Achleitner, Marc Bitzer, Markus Flik and Celonis co founder and co CEO Bastian Nominacher. Atira also disclosed a previously unannounced $2.5 million pre seed round, bringing its total disclosed funding to $17.5 million.
Tackling a Major Industrial Workflow
Founded in Munich in November 2024 by Florian Diegruber and August DuMont Schütte, Atira is building an AI orchestration platform for companies selling complex, built to order products.
For these businesses, responding to a request for quotation can take weeks or even months. A single RFQ may require sales engineers, product specialists, commercial teams and legal departments to review technical specifications, check feasibility, calculate pricing and prepare detailed documentation.
Atira estimates that industrial sales engineering represents more than $128 billion in annual labour spending globally. Despite its importance, much of the process still depends on manual work, institutional knowledge and information spread across different departments and software systems.
Connecting the Industrial Stack
Atira’s platform is designed to work with the systems manufacturers already use rather than requiring companies to replace their existing technology infrastructure.
The platform connects with customer relationship management systems, enterprise resource planning software and configure, price, quote platforms. It processes incoming customer requests, identifies relevant requirements and helps teams assess and respond to them.
The AI system can generate outputs including technical documentation, configuration proposals and pricing options. By bringing together information from existing systems, historical projects and internal expertise, Atira aims to reduce the number of manual handoffs involved in preparing a proposal.
Turning Expertise Into Software
A key part of Atira’s proposition is its focus on the knowledge embedded inside industrial organisations.
Manufacturers often depend on experienced employees who understand product configurations, customer requirements, pricing rules and technical limitations. Much of this knowledge may not be formally documented and can be difficult to access when experienced staff are unavailable.
Atira wants to turn that expertise into a scalable digital capability. Its AI platform can draw on historical project information and organisational knowledge to support sales engineering teams during the proposal process.
Florian Diegruber, CEO and co founder of Atira, said sales engineering is one of the largest workflows in manufacturing that software has not truly automated. He said the company aims to bring AI into the process and make critical commercial expertise more accessible across industrial organisations.
Expanding Beyond Sales Engineering
The latest funding will support Atira’s next stage of growth. The company plans to expand its go to market team, accelerate product development and enter international markets.
Atira also intends to move into adjacent commercial workflows as its platform develops. These areas include pricing intelligence, aftersales operations and supplier coordination.
The expansion could allow Atira to move beyond automating individual RFQ processes and become a broader AI layer for commercial operations in industrial companies.
Building for Global Industry
The backing from Accel and other investors gives Atira significant resources only two years after its founding. The participation of experienced industrial and technology executives also reflects growing interest in applying AI to complex business processes that have traditionally required specialised human expertise.
For Atira, the opportunity lies in connecting that expertise with the software systems already embedded in manufacturing organisations. By automating repetitive analysis and documentation while preserving access to technical knowledge, the company aims to shorten the journey from customer request to commercial proposal.
With $15 million in new seed funding and an additional $2.5 million pre seed round, Atira is now preparing to take its industrial sales engineering platform into more markets and expand its role across the wider commercial workflow.
