Why Grand Ventures invested in Shelfmark. August 6, 2026 By: Tim Streit Walk through almost any factory making rolled goods, fabric, labels, industrial film, webbing, and you'll find the same quality control system: a person standing next to a production line moving hundreds of feet a minute, looking at it. That has been the state of the art in continuous flow manufacturing quality control for decades. Not because manufacturers haven't tried to do better. Because until recently, nothing better existed. Grand Ventures is proud to partner with Pat O'Donnell and Craig Markovitz, co-founders of Shelfmark, who are building the AI inspection platform that continuous-flow manufacturing has been waiting for. Legacy machine vision players like Keyence, Cognex, and ISRA were built decades ago for discrete, static products. Their systems rely on rules-based algorithms that require controlled lighting, fixed geometry, and tightly scripted defect libraries. This type of technology hasn't transferred well to continuous flow manufacturing, where lines run at extremely high speeds. The result: continuous-flow manufacturers, the companies making the fabric in your clothes, the labels on your prescriptions, the material in military parachutes, were left out. Grand Ventures spoke with a 30-year industry veteran who put it plainly: the incumbents won't bid on a product if they don't already have the algorithm for it. And they don't have algorithms for continuous flow. That's the gap Shelfmark fills. Why now? Advances in computer vision and sensor technology have unlocked data capture at a resolution and scale that was previously infeasible. Paired with modern AI, this enables dynamic modeling, pattern recognition, and near-real-time detection and resolution. Shelfmark's platform pairs deep-learning computer vision with line-scan camera hardware and IoT sensors to inspect every inch of material at full production speed. No sampling, no spot checks, no hoping the defect happened to be in the section someone glanced at. What makes this compound over time is what happens after detection. Shelfmark generates a "roll map report card" for every production run, a structured quality record tied to that specific roll of material. That record is beginning to travel up and down supply chains. Customers are pushing Shelfmark on their own suppliers. Grand Ventures has seen a lot of go-to-market strategies; 'your customers do it for you' is one of the best ones. One Fortune 500 customer built their own internal ROI model, presented to their CEO to justify rolling Shelfmark out globally, showing $40 million in five-year savings net of cost. Usually the optimistic spreadsheet is the VC's job. This time the customer did it for Grand Ventures. Twenty minutes into my first call with Pat, the CEO, it was obvious he hadn't built a tool and gone looking for a problem. He'd spent months watching the problem happen and built what the people would buy. Before Pat wrote a single line of code, he spent months on factory floors understanding this market firsthand. He rode alongside workers on early shifts at factories and production floors, absorbing what the job actually looked like before designing software to change it. His background spans industrial engineering, Deloitte consulting, and software product studios. He speaks the language of plant managers and the language of engineers, which matters in a market where the buyer is a floor operations lead, not a CTO. Co-founder Craig Markovitz previously founded Blue Belt Technologies, a CMU Robotics Institute spinout in surgical robotics, acquired by Smith & Nephew. He's taught entrepreneurship at CMU for a decade, which means he's seen more startup pitches than almost anyone alive. Shelfmark is the only one he joined. Physical hardware on production lines creates switching costs that no software-only competitor can bypass without replacing line equipment. Shelfmark has patents filed covering vertical-specific inspection methods. Each deployment generates labeled defect data that makes models more accurate and shortens time-to-value for the next customer in the same vertical. And as the roll map report card becomes a shared quality standard, pushed upstream and downstream by customers, the company earns a structural position in industrial infrastructure that doesn't come from a product roadmap. It compounds from deployment. Shelfmark is operating in a very green space. The incumbents will eventually notice the market they've been ignoring - they usually do, once someone else proves it's worth the trouble. Shelfmark's head start is leading in deployments - what compounds and accelerates is the data they will generate and analyze, and the network effects of manufacturers, vendors, and customers. At Grand Ventures, Grand Ventures look for companies quietly becoming mission-critical in large, overlooked markets. A significant segment of global manufacturing is still doing quality control by eyeball in 2026, not for lack of trying, but for lack of a product that worked. Shelfmark built the one that does. Grand Ventures is proud to welcome them to the Grand Ventures portfolio. Extra icing on the cake... * My first summer internship nearly 30 years ago was on the plant floor at Ford Motor Company (I studied ME at U of M) and observed quality control first hand...manually and painstakingly. * Pittsburgh has been on my radar for over 10 years, waiting for the right company. The engineering and computer vision expertise at CMU is unparalleled. * Kudos to Jacqueline for sourcing this opportunity, and Anthony at Armory Square for sharing! * Grand Ventures has been spending more time on Physical AI the past 6-12 months. This is the product of the early work. * I love it when a plan comes full circle! If you go back to my Ford days/engineering undergrad... it's been 30 years in the making!

HPA backs AI-Native production intelligence platform revolutionizing continuous-flow manufacturing. August 5, 2026 By Pete Wilkins HPA invests in Shelfmark's $3.5 million seed round. Shelfmark is an AI-native production intelligence platform for continuous-flow manufacturing. The round was led by Armory Square Ventures, with participation from HPA, Grand Ventures, Argon Ventures, and Cultivation Capital. This financing brings Shelfmark's total capital raised to approximately $5 million. Shelfmark is bringing greater autonomy to one of manufacturing's largest yet most overlooked environments: the fast-moving lines that produce materials on reels, rolls, and continuous webs, including industrial films, apparel graphics, webbing, paper, flooring, coiled metals, and more. The speed of these lines, combined with frequent specification changes, makes defects difficult to catch in real time, and too often issues are discovered only after large volumes of affected material have already been produced. Shelfmark's platform combines in-line cameras, software, and proprietary deep-learning computer vision to analyze high-speed production lines, detect defects the moment they occur, and turn the data generated during every run into a foundation for self-optimizing production. "Continuous-flow manufacturers make the materials and components that keep the economy moving, but most quality systems are not built for the speed, variation, and complexity of their production lines," said Pat O'Donnell, CEO of Shelfmark. "We built Shelfmark in Pittsburgh, alongside operators and engineers on real factory floors, to give those lines the intelligence they need to become more autonomous. This is not about replacing workers - it is about doing work people cannot perform consistently at line speed, helping manufacturers catch problems as they happen and giving teams the information they need to prevent problems in the future." HPA has a strong reputation for backing transformative technologies led by exceptional founders targeting massive, underserved markets. Shelfmark fits this criteria perfectly: * Massive, Overlooked Market: Products made on reels, rolls, and continuous lines underpin much of modern manufacturing, yet most quality systems are not designed for the speed and variability of these environments. Shelfmark is purpose-built for this large, underserved segment, giving continuous-flow manufacturers an automation layer that begins with quality and extends into fully self-optimized production. * AI-Native Advantage: Shelfmark manages the hardware, models, tuning, and ongoing performance as one integrated platform - not a standalone inspection tool. Its closed-loop intelligence moves from detection to explanation to guided corrective action and back again, connecting defect events with production conditions such as temperature and humidity to explain why problems happen and how to prevent them. In one deployment, Shelfmark identified a statistically significant relationship between defect rates and environmental conditions; after the manufacturer installed humidity controls, its defect rate fell by half. * Exceptional Team & Proven ROI: Led by CEO Pat O'Donnell and developed alongside operators on real factory floors, Shelfmark reports 99.5% defect-detection accuracy in customer deployments that have halved inspection labor costs and generated returns of up to 7x compared with manual inspection. * Early Validation at Scale: Developed through work with 40 manufacturing facilities, Shelfmark has already helped manufacturers cut waste by up to 90% and has achieved a 90% pilot conversion rate, securing customers and enterprise contracts across its four initial markets: industrial films, decorated apparel, webbing, and structured building components. "A flaw in a component worth a couple of cents can ruin a finished product worth hundreds - that's the problem Shelfmark solves, in a market that has gone underserved for a long time. Between the product market fit and Pat's focus as a CEO, the company is well positioned to grow quickly," said Steve Prokup, HPA Deal Lead for Shelfmark. With this new funding, Shelfmark will build its sales and marketing organization, expand deployments across its initial markets, and continue developing the intelligence that moves manufacturers from defect detection to root-cause understanding, prediction, and prevention - with the long-term goal of enabling more autonomous production. On behalf of HPA, HPA congratulate Pat and the entire Shelfmark team on this important milestone and are thrilled to support the company's continued growth in bringing intelligence and autonomy to continuous-flow manufacturing. Additionally, HPA would like to thank HPA Deal Lead Steve Prokup and HPA Investment Lead Michael Sachaj, who will continue to support the Shelfmark team.