Cloneable Raises $4.6M to Advance AI for Expert Knowledge in Heavy Industries

Cloneable, a startup founded in 2023 by Tyler Collins, Lia Reich, and Patrick Lohman, has raised $4.6 million in seed funding, according to Crunchbase News. The Raleigh, North Carolina-based company uses AI to shadow human experts in sectors like energy and replicate their workflows into autonomous agents, as detailed in the funding announcement.

Funding Round Participants

Congruent Ventures led the seed round, which included investments from First In, Overline, Bull City Venture Partners, and St. Elmo Venture Capital, the investment arm of Texas Area Telecom. This brings Cloneable’s total funding to $5.35 million since its inception, supporting its efforts to address knowledge gaps in heavy industries.

Origins and Inspiration

The idea for Cloneable stems from experiences of its founders at PrecisionHawk in 2019, when they assisted in inspecting infrastructure during California wildfires. There, co-founders Lia Reich, Tyler Collins, and Patrick Lohman observed that while 150 drone pilots surveyed transmission lines, data review required hundreds of workers, with only a few experts knowing what to identify, according to Crunchbase News. This highlighted a “knowledge crisis” in industries like energy, oil and gas, and agriculture, where experienced workers retire faster than they can be replaced.

Product Development and Expansion

In February 2025, Cloneable launched Cloneable Field for automated infrastructure inspection in the energy sector and is now introducing an agentic product to codify expert knowledge into scalable AI agents. The company claims its technology can complete tasks, such as structural calculations for utility poles, in under two minutes—a process that typically takes a human engineer eight hours. The funding will enable expansion into industries including public utilities, vegetation management, construction, rail, mining, agriculture, and manufacturing, as reported by Crunchbase News.

Cloneable has grown its annual recurring revenue (ARR) 100x between February and the end of 2025 and serves customers such as American Electric Power, Southern California Edison, Burns & McDonnell, TRC, Sigma, and Perdue. Its platform differentiates by capturing audio and documentation from experts in real time to create AI agents, focusing on proprietary data and workflows specific to these industries.

Applications and Business Model

The startup’s AI automates workflows previously deemed too complex, allowing a single engineer to process 4,500 to 5,500 poles a year, while a Cloneable agent can handle 2 million to 3 million. This could redirect labor savings of $115,000 to $312,000 annually for a mid-size engineering firm with five to 10 people. Cloneable generates revenue through seat-based licensing for its field offering, emphasizing cost-effective, industry-specific models.