Overview

• The financing totals €7.5 million, combining a €5.5 million seed round co-led by Asterion Ventures and Leap435 with €1 million in public grants and €1 million from prior pre-seed funding.
• Futurail plans to use the funds to hire, advance regulatory certification, and expand pilots into paid programs under a Driver-as-a-Service model over the next three to five years.
• Its FUTURAILDriver stack—designed for retrofit or new builds—uses lidar, radar, and cameras, with the company claiming up to 400-meter obstacle detection and 10-centimeter positioning, and hardware meeting EN50155 rail standards.
• The rollout roadmap progresses from depots and industrial sites to branch lines and then open mainlines, with projects targeting system certification in 2027 and mass production in 2028.
• Early partnerships include France’s Lohr Group and U.S.-based Parallel Systems, with initial deployments focused on depot movements to ease driver shortages and, by the company’s estimate, cut driver-related costs by up to 80%.