LONDON--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Jul 31, 2026--
AI is finally coming for one of the least glamorous, yet most essential, parts of the global economy: spare parts.
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Intropy, the AI-native platform automating inventory, pricing and other critical decisions for spare parts businesses, today announced that it has raised $11 million in seed financing. The seed round was led by Felix Capital, with participation from Quiet Capital and early investors General Catalyst and firstminute capital
Founded in 2024 by Franziska Kirschner and YihKai Teh, Intropy helps spare parts distributors, manufacturers, and recyclers increase profitability and operational efficiency through AI-powered decision-making processes that have historically depended on spreadsheets, outdated legacy software and extensive manual review.
Bringing AI to the physical backbone of the economy
Spare parts keep the world moving. They keep vehicles on the road, machinery operating, goods flowing and critical infrastructure functioning. In the automotive industry alone, more than $4 billion in spare parts are estimated to be transacted every day.
Despite its scale and importance, much of the industry still runs on software designed decades ago. Critical decisions, including how much stock to hold, where to place it, when to change a price, and which inventory is becoming obsolete, often require teams to manually review hundreds of thousands of individual SKUs.
These challenges are becoming more acute as parts businesses contend with tariffs, rising fuel and operating costs, uncertain repair volumes and increasingly complex vehicles and machines. The information needed to make better decisions is often spread across ERP systems, warehouse platforms, spreadsheets, images, documents, and phone conversations.
“The physical economy is sustained not only by what we build, but by our ability to keep it working. Spare parts make that possible, yet many of the industry’s most important decisions still rely on fragmented systems and manual work,” said Franziska Kirschner, co-founder and CEO. “We are not interested in adding another dashboard on top of that complexity. We are building an AI-native operating system that can make and execute decisions autonomously, at scale and speed. The future is here, and we are ready to serve an industry that technology has overlooked for far too long.”
Intropy’s technology aggregates fragmented structured and unstructured information, to automate decisions directly within a customer’s existing operations in an ERP rather than simply presenting recommendations for employees to review. This includes dynamically adjusting inventory levels and pricing, managing obsolescence, allowing businesses to move from periodic, reactive reviews to proactive decisions that update continuously as market conditions change.
Since its launch, Intropy’s technology has processed more than $10 billion in parts demand: enough to buy new spark plugs for every passenger car in North America. Customers using the platform have achieved measurable improvements, including returns on investment of more than 10x.
“Every machine made from multiple components will eventually need spare parts, whether it is a car on the road today, an autonomous vehicle of tomorrow or a robot supporting humanity on Mars,” said YihKai Teh, co-founder and CTO. “We’re building the intelligence layer that understands the extraordinary complexity of spare parts: what fits, how it performs and when it is needed, so parts businesses can make better decisions. Our goal is to make that complexity invisible, with intelligence working quietly in the background. The best user experience is when the user needs to do nothing at all.”
Intropy will use the funding to accelerate product development, expand its engineering and machine learning teams, and establish a New York office as it grows its presence in the United States. The company will also continue expanding across Europe.
"Every product is designed with components, or spare parts, yet the systems managing those parts remain remarkably manual and fragmented,” said Fabian Burnett Small, Investor at Felix Capital. “At Felix, we believe AI will fundamentally transform product design, and how the physical economy operates. Intropy is building the intelligence layer that can make supply chains faster, smarter and significantly more efficient - ultimately bringing a better product faster in the hands of the end user. We were immediately impressed by Fran and YihKai's technical depth, domain expertise and ambition, and are excited to support them in building a new intelligence layer for the physical world."
Ultimately, Intropy’s mission extends beyond improving parts businesses’ financial performance. A more efficient spare parts supply chain makes it easier and faster to repair and maintain vehicles and machinery, extends the useful life of existing assets and keeps more parts in circulation rather than allowing them to become obsolete or go to waste.
Intropy is hiring engineers and AI researchers in London and New York to help build the next generation of infrastructure for the spare parts economy. Open roles are available at intropy.ai/careers.
About Intropy
Intropy is building the AI-native operating system for the spare parts industry. Founded in London in 2024 by Franziska Kirschner and YihKai Teh, Intropy enables spare parts businesses to automate critical workflows across demand prediction, inventory distribution, obsolescence management and dynamic pricing using AI.
Franziska is a University of Oxford-trained physicist whose research has been published in Nature, while YihKai, from Malaysia, is an AI academic from University College London. The founders developed a deep appreciation for the spare parts industry while working together at Tractable, where they became inventors on more than 10 patents applying AI to the sector.
By connecting directly with existing ERP and other operational systems, Intropy’s parts-specific AI transforms fragmented information into decisions that can be executed automatically. Its platform has processed more than $10 billion in parts sales and supported parts operations across the United States, the United Kingdom and Europe.
For more: intropy.ai
Intropy co-founders Franziska Kirschner and YihKai Teh.
