ClearOps, a Munich-based startup building an AI platform for industrial after-sales operations, closed an €8.6 million Series A funding round led by Hitachi Ventures, with participation from Schoeller Group and Barkawi Group. The company announced the round on its blog on May 21, with FinSMEs reporting additional details on May 25.
The round is ClearOps’ first institutional capital raise. The company plans to invest in go-to-market expansion, ecosystem partnerships, and further development of its AI platform.
What ClearOps Does
ClearOps connects manufacturers, dealers, service partners, and connected machines on a single platform. Rather than replacing existing infrastructure, the system aggregates data across the service supply chain to predict parts demand and automate service workflows. According to the company, customers have seen parts availability improvements of up to 40%, parts sales growth of 5-15%, and repair time reductions of up to two days.
The platform currently supports thousands of connected dealers and millions of machines worldwide. Named customers include AGCO, Terex, Jungheinrich, and Lippert, spanning agriculture, construction, material handling, and trucking, according to the company’s announcement.
Founded by CEO William Barkawi, ClearOps employs approximately 60 people across Munich, Lisbon, Atlanta, and San José.
Why Hitachi Ventures Led
Pete Bastien, Partner at Hitachi Ventures, framed the investment around a category shift: “Industrial after sales is entering a fundamental transformation. As machines become increasingly connected and customer expectations around uptime continue to rise, traditional approaches to service operations will no longer be sufficient,” according to the ClearOps blog post.
Hitachi’s participation is notable because the parent company is itself a major industrial technology manufacturer. The investment represents both a financial bet and a strategic validation of ClearOps’ approach from a company that operates the kind of global service networks ClearOps aims to automate.
Agent Workflows in Physical Operations
The round fits a pattern visible across 2026 funding: autonomous agent capabilities moving from software-native verticals (coding, security, customer support) into physical operations. ClearOps’ platform automates decisions that previously required human dispatchers, including which parts to stock at which dealer location, when to schedule preventive maintenance, and how to route service technicians.
The difference between ClearOps and a traditional ERP optimization tool is the autonomy layer. The platform does not just recommend actions. According to the company, it increasingly executes critical service and parts workflows without manual intervention, connecting machine telemetry data directly to dealer inventory and service scheduling systems.
At €8.6M, the round is modest compared to the hundreds of millions flowing into general-purpose agent platforms. But it marks a clear signal that vertical-specific agent automation, where the agent’s domain is narrow enough to act autonomously with high reliability, is attracting serious institutional capital.