Autonomy, not analytics
Most factory AI stops at a dashboard. Panevex takes control of the process — stringing, lamination and binning parameters move because the model decided they should. That is a far harder product and a far more defensible one.
Panevex
Every module, peak power.
The autonomous operations layer for solar PV module manufacturing. Panevex closes the loop from perception to machine control across stringing, electroluminescence inspection, lamination, binning and framing — so every module leaves the line crack-free, on-spec and at its target power class.
- Stage at entry
- Seed
- Year
- 2024
- Sector
- Industrial autonomy
- Headquarters
- Munich, Germany
- Initium role
- Led the round
- Website
- panevex.com
The company
Autonomy for the solar factory.
Cell-to-module lines, for module makers, gigafactories and integrated cell-and-module producers.
Incumbent suppliers sell a stringer, or an inspection system, or a laminator, or a cell sorter, or a line MES. None of them unify the process. Panevex runs the whole loop: a string-and-interconnect agent controls soldering, ribbon alignment, cell gap and bond strength; a defect-and-EL agent predicts microcracks, broken fingers and cold joints in real time from electroluminescence and vision; a laminate-and-encapsulate agent holds temperature, vacuum, pressure and cure; a bin-and-match agent optimises power-class matching; and a module digital twin simulates interconnection, cure and IV to hit the target power class before the run ever starts.
The result is a line that perceives and acts rather than one that inspects and reports. As cells get larger, thinner and more fragile — TOPCon, HJT, perovskite tandem — the craft required to run them repeatably is concentrated in a scarce group of module-process engineers. Panevex encodes that craft, and every corrected defect makes the next line better.
Why we invested
Three reasons we led the round.
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A compounding data moat
Cross-factory defect, power, lamination and binning data — paired with the corrections real process engineers make — is a dataset no point tool can assemble. It gets better with every line deployed and it does not transfer to competitors.
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Terawatt-scale timing
Solar is the fastest-growing power source on earth, and the module buildout is outrunning the supply of engineers who can tune a line. Cost-per-watt pressure makes yield and power class the only levers left.
Founders
The people we backed.
Two founders, one factory floor. They met on a module line in Thalheim and started Panevex eleven months later.
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Mattias Lindqvist
Co-founder & Chief Executive Officer
Ten years running module process engineering across two European gigafactories. Swedish, based in Munich, and the only CEO we have met who can still re-tune a stringer himself at two in the morning.
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Elena Kowalczyk
Co-founder & Chief Technology Officer
Computer vision and edge inference. Built electroluminescence defect models that shipped to production lines before founding Panevex, and now owns the perception-to-control stack end to end.
What the founders say about working with Initium Fund
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We had one pilot line and a model that worked on a Tuesday. Initium did not ask us for a market map — they asked what breaks a module. Then they put us in front of two module makers before the round even closed.
Mattias Lindqvist Co-founder & CEO, Panevex
Since the round
What has happened since.
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Seed round led by Initium Fund
Two pilot lines, one European module maker, and a defect model that had never run under production tact time.
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First closed-loop stringing deployment
Panevex moved from inspection to control, adjusting bonding and ribbon alignment live. Cell breakage fell materially on the first line to run it.
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Module twin in production
Target power class and yield now predicted before a run starts, with lamination and binning parameters set from the simulation.