“These are the machines that make machines”
If you’ve ever dismissed CNC machines as dull, think again. Stockholm-based deeptech startup IPercept is showing that the future of European manufacturing may depend on understanding these quiet giants. And acting before they fail.
Founder Karoly Szipka started his journey in academia, researching machine diagnostics at KTH, Sweden’s largest and most prestigious technical university. What began as a PhD project has become a fast-growing company used by industrial leaders like Scania, Volvo and Bosch.
– These are the machines that make machines. And yet there’s been almost no innovation in how we understand their condition, says Karoly.
IPercept’s solution? A proprietary hardware-software combo that functions like a fitness tracker for CNC machines. It runs a short motion-based test cycle and detects even the smallest mechanical deviations, without touching production systems or IT infrastructure.
– We can diagnose existing problems with the mechanics of the machine, so the user gets access to its health status within one or two days, down to the component level.
The test cycle only takes five minutes. If needed, the machine can be “sent to the doctor” every day or once a week. Without connecting to production or IT systems, IPercept delivers a high-resolution mechanical diagnosis that is fast, precise and plug-and-play.
But the core insight didn’t come from the machines. It came from the people operating them.
– In the beginning, we thought we were building something for machines. But we’re delivering for people, because they’re the ones making the decisions that improve efficiency, says Karoly.
Since launching commercially in 2022, IPercept has landed over two dozen enterprise customers and expanded into eight countries. The next growth phase focuses on partnerships with machine builders and service providers.
– We want to be the “Intel Inside” for CNC machines — bringing data and facts into conversations that change the entire narrative, says Karoly.
The company’s stack is also evolving into something more powerful: an intelligent assistant trained on proprietary CNC data. The goal is to let users query machine health in natural language and help close a growing industrial skills gap.
– Just in Sweden, 20,000 experts are missing from the field of maintenance, both technicians and engineers, and we’re only educating 200. If we don’t fix this, we won’t be able to scale up production.
It’s not just a Swedish issue. Karoly believes Europe’s entire industrial base is at a critical point, and hardtech founders need to think long-term.
– We didn’t run out of time. We ran out of time five years ago. And companies, I’ve been around, they’ve been ringing the bell. But people weren’t paying attention.
IPercept is now working to preserve not just uptime, but expertise.
– What’s really worrying is that many of these titans are retiring. We need to make sure their knowledge, mixed with passion, is passed on to the next generation, says Karoly.