May you think about plugging ChatGPT right into a robotic and setting it unfastened on a manufacturing facility flooring?
For Simone Di Somma, founder and chief government of Milan-based Cyberwave, it’s a query that will get to the guts of why synthetic intelligence (AI) is a lot more durable to construct for the bodily world.
Factories and warehouses run on processes {that a} general-purpose mannequin is aware of nothing about, and in an atmosphere the place machines can break and folks can get damage, there’s little room for error.
“That’s why you want the infrastructure to attach AI with the true world,” Di Somma tells Tech Funding Information on stage throughout the Wave by Vento convention in Turin, Italy, this week.
Alongside fellow Italian entrepreneur Elisa Seghetti, co-founder and CEO of London-based Saturn Dynamics, Di Somma was talking on a panel titled “Atoms Are Again,” which explored what occurs as AI strikes off the display screen and into the bodily world. And, after all, what it takes to construct that future from Europe.
For Di Somma, Europe’s benefit lies within the options which have lengthy set it aside, and it begins on the manufacturing facility flooring.
Producing higher
“Folks all over the world will not be shopping for our merchandise for the volumes, for the worth,” Di Somma says. As a substitute, he argues, it’s “for the heritage, for the standard, for the story that’s round our product.”
It’s a pointed argument at a time during which China now accounts for more than a quarter of the world’s manufactured items, with Europe’s share falling behind. However the issue, Di Somma suggests, comes all the way down to making an attempt to compete on value.
“Within the final 20 years in Europe, now we have adopted a approach of manufacturing issues that was caught to manufacturing effectivity – effectivity, effectivity, effectivity,” he says. “If we go down that path, we’ll lose to China.”
As a substitute, Di Somma sees demand shifting in direction of fewer merchandise which might be extra precious and extra personalised, and factors to Ferrari for instance. “It’s not producing extra, but it surely’s producing higher,” he says.
The catch is that almost all factories aren’t constructed to alter rapidly. “With a purpose to produce higher, you want new methods to reconfigure your manufacturing facility in days, not in years,” Di Somma explains. “We have to make our manufacturing strains software-defined, AI-defined.”
That’s the place Cyberwave is available in. The startup, which Di Somma co-founded in 2025 after promoting his earlier firm, Askdata, to SAP, connects robots, sensors and industrial tools from totally different producers to a single platform.
Engineers can basically check adjustments on a digital copy of the machines first, then push them to the true {hardware} as soon as they work.
Cyberwave raised €7 million in October 2025 in a spherical led by United Ventures, with participation from Vento.
The push for extra worth over quantity is an concept that echoed throughout the convention.
Jony Ive, the British designer finest identified for his work at Apple, mentioned on the stage earlier within the day that “it’s very laborious to make one thing that’s new and totally different, and its newness is a consequence of it being higher.” He was discussing the Ferrari Luce he designed with the carmaker.
A lot of what Cyberwave does is determined by simulation. Di Somma says the corporate places round 80% of its funds into it, as a result of it lets groups check adjustments safely earlier than something touches an actual machine. “Simulation is a recreation changer,” he provides.
A flight simulator for robots
That’s the place Seghetti’s Saturn Dynamics is available in. Based in 2025, the London-based startup builds a generative world mannequin. It creates life like, physics-aware environments the place robots can be taught and practise earlier than they ever attain an actual manufacturing facility flooring.
It has been described as a flight simulator, however for robots, and goals to deal with a spot that Seghetti has noticed within the area.
Giant language fashions realized from trillions of phrases freely out there on-line, however there isn’t a equal web of robotic actions, so bodily AI corporations should both accumulate real-world demonstrations or generate their very own.
However constructing a basis mannequin from Europe comes with its personal challenges, Seghetti explains, with US labs commanding way more capital and computing energy.
The answer, much like what Di Somma has described, isn’t making an attempt to outspend them.
“Basically, what now we have performed is now we have modified the economics of the issue,” Seghetti says, including that the group is “not making an attempt to win throughout all domains from begin.”
Saturn’s mannequin, she explains, was constructed on an environment friendly structure from the outset, which suggests each greenback the corporate raises can go additional.
Simulation nonetheless has its limits, nonetheless. Seghetti says it really works effectively for scaling up fashions however can nonetheless fall quick on fine-grained precision, although the physics is catching up rapidly. Two years in the past, she says, world fashions may solely simulate inflexible objects. And now, they’re beginning to deal with comfortable ones too.
For the businesses shopping for robots, simulation can be a strategy to sustain with a market transferring at pace.
“Any robotic goes to grow to be 100 instances quicker and higher in 5 years,” Seghetti says. “When you lock your self into the present vendor, you’re principally locking your self into an organization that in two years doesn’t seem like it did.”
The place Europe nonetheless has an edge
Europe’s funding image stays a sticking level. Round 70% of late-stage European deep-tech funding comes from non-European traders, based on Dealroom. However at Wave, the message from founders and traders was extra about doubling down on the place Europe already has as an edge.
“If in case you have a terrific venture and also you’re credible and protracted, you may get as a lot cash right here as nearly anyplace,” Bending Spoons CEO Luca Ferrari mentioned in a separate session. Vento’s Diyala D’Aveni made an analogous case, arguing that Europe has already produced world-class expertise and that the larger hole is perception and ambition.
For Di Somma, that comes all the way down to tradition. Europe’s coverage framework is “very risk-averse,” he says. “We should always actually consider the builders as the brand new heroes of this period.”
Beginning has by no means been simpler, he provides. “However then to complete merchandise and tasks is tremendous troublesome.” With its industrial heritage, its engineers and a brand new era of founders constructing on the intersection of AI and the bodily world, Europe could effectively have what it takes – if it’s keen to see it by.
