LONDON, May 30 (Reuters) -

Leading venture capital firm Index Ventures has backed a $16

million funding round for EthonAI, a startup using artificial

intelligence to help global-scale manufacturers make their

production lines more efficient.

The company, founded by AI researchers Julian Senoner and

Torbjorn Netland in 2021, uses "causal AI" models to better

predict how different factors can make the manufacturing process

run more smoothly.

The company counts a number of world-leading businesses

among its clients, including German technology giant Siemens,

Swiss chocolate maker Lindt & Spruengli, and drugmaker Roche.

EthonAI said its software had reduced the number of

chocolates that Lindt had to reject at the end of the production

line, providing supervisors with real-time data to allow them to

spot defects and adjust processes.

EthonAI's funding round was led by Index Ventures, a that

has previously invested in tech companies such as Dropbox, Meta

, and Slack.

Katharina Wilhelm, the partner at Index who led the

investment, said: "Factories have truly come online in the last

few years, with sensors now being used to measure everything

from the temperature of a boiler to the vibration of a motor.

But data is only valuable if you can digest it, make sense of

it, and use it to drive decisions."

EthonAI raised 15 million Swiss francs ($16.5 million) in

venture capital from Index alongside venture capital firms such

as General Catalyst, Earlybird, and Founderful.

($1 = 0.9116 Swiss francs)