Futurail, the European deep-tech startup developing an autonomy stack for self-driving trains, has closed its seed round, raising a total of €7.5 million in funding. The round was co-led by Asterion Ventures (Paris) and Leap435 (Munich), joined by EIT Urban Mobility and US investors Zero Infinity Partners and Heroic Ventures
Futurail, founded in 2023, is led by former leaders from Tesla, Argo AI, and Edge Case, who played a key role in shaping the rise of autonomous driving in the automotive sector and are now bringing their expertise to the rail sector.
Alex Haag, CEO and co-founder of Futurail, said, "While leading the Autopilot team at Tesla, I saw how autonomy can completely transform an entire industry. We founded Futurail to bring that same revolutionary potential to rail, turning a 200-year-old industry into the backbone of sustainable mobility."
Futurail is already working with customers in Europe and the US, integrating and testing their system.
Driverless trains
Futurail is utilising its AI technology to address one of rail's significant challenges: a growing shortage of train drivers, which limits the expansion of rail services and increases operating costs.
Governments are under mounting pressure to provide flexible, cost-efficient, and sustainable mobility for citizens and industries, which can only be achieved by transferring passengers and freight from road to rail.
Futurail aims to meet this demand by implementing automated train operation, allowing operators to run more services at lower costs while maintaining reliability, flexibility, and safety. Its autonomy stack, FuturailDriver, can be integrated into new trains or retrofitted onto existing fleets, enabling the full use of secondary lines and the reopening of routes that were previously unprofitable, reinforcing regional connectivity and leading to new capacities across the network.
The startup already benefits from strategic early partnerships: in Europe with Lohr Group, a French global specialist in the design and manufacture of transport systems, including rail systems; and in the US with Parallel Systems, an automated, battery-electric freight rail vehicle startup founded by former SpaceX engineers.
Maximilian Schöffer, CCO and co-founder, said, "What excites our partners is that autonomy unlocks both growth and efficiency. Operators can run more trains, more often, at lower cost. That is a complete game-changer."
At scale, this shift will shift millions of passengers and tons of freight from road to rail, resulting in more than 10 million tons of CO₂ emissions avoided annually.
Dr Patrick Dendorfer, CTO and co-founder, said, "This is not a fancy research project. It is about the serious ambition to build a certified, safe system that holds the expectations to redefine how people and goods move."
Growth and innovation
Alexandre Sauvage, partner at Asterion Ventures, said, "[Futurail] combines deep technical expertise and long-term vision with proven commercial traction to establish global relevance. Their technology has the potential to transform rail into the backbone of sustainable mobility in Europe and beyond."
Dr Matthias Kempf, founding partner at Leap435, said, "Just as electric traction replaced steam and defined a new era, autonomy is the transformative technology of this century for the rail. Futurail is delivering this leap and ensuring Europe's industry stays ahead."
Next phase of growth
With €7.5 million in funding, comprising €5.5 million in seed investment, €1 million in public grants, and €1 million from a pre-seed conversion, Futurail will expand its team, advance key projects with leading train OEMs and operators, and obtain regulatory approval for its first use case: depot autonomy.
