In a landmark partnership in AI for manufacturers, Salesforce Ventures recently led Axion's Series B funding round. “Customers spoke a lot about how big the ROI was in terms of warranty savings”.

The decision reflects a fundamental shift in how manufacturers approach product quality - moving from reactive damage control to proactive, AI-driven excellence. Laura Rowson, Investor at Salesforce Ventures, sat down with Axion CEO Daniel First to discuss why this partnership matters and what it means for the future of manufacturing.

The Vertical AI Thesis: Why Manufacturing Is Different

Rowson emphasized that while AI technology is evolving at breakneck speed, the real value lies in specialized, vertical applications. "There are a lot of legacy industries that historically have been pretty laggard in how they've adopted new software and new technology tooling," she explained. "Actually, the advent of AI and these new models really offers an opportunity for step change in terms of their processes and for huge productivity gains."

Manufacturers stood out to Salesforce Ventures for several critical reasons. These are industries working with unstructured data sets that have been difficult to integrate, where workflow tooling has not been particularly advanced, and where many organizations still rely heavily on email and Excel for core processes. The opportunity for transformation is immense.

Beyond Generic AI: The Enterprise Implementation Gap

A key insight from Rowson addresses the disconnect between AI hype and enterprise reality. "The technology is evolving at such a rapid pace, but in terms of how enterprises can actually use it, it's perhaps a little bit more lagged," she noted. This lag stems from understanding applicable use cases, implementation challenges, and lengthy procurement cycles.

What excited Salesforce Ventures about Axion was the company's ability to bridge this gap. "You clearly understood the market, you clearly understood the customer," Rowson told Daniel. "You'd found a really interesting and important wedge on the quality side, and time to value particularly with new technology is so important."

The traditional approach of starting with SMBs and gradually moving upmarket doesn't work for true enterprise AI. "I do think it requires a fundamentally different approach," Rowson emphasized. "You have to design your platform and your tooling for the enterprise, and that requires thinking about governance and permissioning and security in a way that you don't necessarily have to if you're just selling into SMBs."

The Power of Data Integration: A Shared Vision

One of the most compelling aspects of the partnership is the complementary data architecture. Rowson highlighted that the level of product integration opportunity with Axion "is not something we always see with our portfolio companies."

"There is a lot of data that sits within Salesforce that the Axion platform can leverage, and equally Axion has access to a ton of different data sets that are very complementary and can really augment what sits within Salesforce as well," she explained. "There's an opportunity to tie these two pieces together more closely to provide shared customers with a much more wholesome view of the data across their organization."

This integration addresses a critical pain point. Manufacturing leaders are often staring at incomplete pictures, watching issues recur without understanding whether engineering has already identified root causes or implemented fixes. The siloed nature of quality data, service data, and engineering insights creates blind spots that cost millions.

The Agentic Future: Quality as Strategic Command Center

Looking ahead, Rowson sees tremendous potential in how Salesforce Agent Force and Axion's AI agents can work together. "Salesforce works closely with other third parties who are accessing different data sets, who are building agentic workflows that will be complementary to Agent Force," she noted. "We see all those things as very much complementary and interoperable."

The vision extends beyond detection and analysis. When quality AI agents identify and root cause emerging issues, they need to trigger downstream actions across the organization - updating knowledge documents for call centers, issuing field service bulletins, and coordinating repair activities. "A world where Axion's agents are talking with agents that are updating knowledge documents in Salesforce or issuing field repair activities - there's quite a lot there that's going to be really exciting," Rowson observed.

Why This Partnership Matters for Your Organization

For VP-level leaders in quality and customer experience, Rowson's insights illuminate why this partnership represents more than a typical vendor relationship. Salesforce Ventures doesn't invest in every AI company - they invest in companies that deeply understand enterprise needs and can deliver real, measurable value.

"Time to value is so crucial, particularly as companies are making really big investments behind AI," Rowson stressed. What impressed Salesforce Ventures was Axion's ability to show quick wins while building toward comprehensive transformation. The company doesn't require 12-month pilots without results - they demonstrate value in weeks, then systematically expand.

This return on investment was also shared in the SalesForce Ventures blog on why they invested in Axion, “During our market research, we received fantastic feedback from users, citing the multi-million-dollar cost savings provided by Axion and the record time-to-value. As one executive put it, the platform delivers “eight engineers in a box.”

The partnership also signals a broader shift in how quality functions. "Quality is actually offense. It's actually about empowering the product strategy team, the product team, the engineering team, the marketing team with the top insights about why these products are failing customers' needs," Rowson noted, echoing Daniel's vision of quality as a strategic command center rather than a defensive cost center.

Looking Forward: Customer-Centric, AI-Driven Product Development

Rowson's vision for the future centers on accelerated feedback loops. "The feedback loop becomes a lot faster. The ability to iterate again is rapidly accelerated," she explained. But it's not just about speed - it's about completeness. AI can identify what doesn't matter just as powerfully as it surfaces critical issues, allowing organizations to redirect resources toward features customers actually value.

"We're only at the very beginning of enterprises actually seeing and realizing a lot of the value that they will going forward," Rowson concluded. For organizations already invested in Salesforce, the Axion partnership offers a clear path to unlocking AI's potential in quality and customer experience - backed by an investor who understands both the technology and the enterprise buying journey.

The strategic alignment between Salesforce and Axion isn't just about capital or go-to-market support. It's about a shared vision of how AI agents, enterprise workflows, and unified data can transform manufacturing from reactive quality control to proactive customer-centric innovation. For quality and CX leaders navigating their AI strategy, this partnership provides both validation and a proven roadmap forward.

Read more about why Salesforce Ventures invested in Axion here.

Learn more about how Axion helps manufacturing teams fix product issues at the first signal here, and sign up to explore a custom demo on your own data. 

Watch and Jump to Key Moments

 ~ 0:00–2:01: What is Axion and why quality matters now
~ 2:19–3:10: Why product failures are a massive multi‑industry problem
~ 3:28–4:33: The ROI gap between generic AI and vertical AI
~ 6:46–8:36: Time‑to‑value and why Salesforce Ventures backed Axion
~ 14:01–15:21: From defensive to offensive quality (and the ice‑cream machine story)
~ 27:21–28:27: Agents, Salesforce + Axion, and unified workflows
~ 28:56–29:57 and 32:18–32:46: Customer‑centric, AI‑driven product development vision

Watch the full conversation: “How AI Is Reinventing Product Quality – Salesforce Ventures x Axion.”