Dropped Out of University to Start AI Company: Now Receiving Million-Dollar Investment

The company Cernel helps webshops automate manual workflows with AI. The company has now received a capital injection of 5.4 million DKK (approximately $780,000) to expand its business.

A family Christmas lunch became the turning point. "My uncle was expressing his frustrations about running his webshop. It struck me how much time is wasted on manual work writing product descriptions. That's where the idea was born," says CEO and co-founder Andreas Busch, who was then a computer science student at Aarhus University.

The meeting with his frustrated uncle became the catalyst for tech company Cernel, which has just raised 5.4 million DKK in an investment round led by venture fund Founderment, the Danish Export and Investment Fund (EIFO), and several prominent business angels.

But while most AI startups build tools, the young team has a different vision: They're building a complete digital department powered by specialized AI agents. "Customers essentially use Cernel's AI agents as extra employees in their marketing department," explains Andreas Busch.

"When we began diving into the problem, we quickly saw that e-commerce is facing a perfect storm. Competition is rising dramatically while marketing costs are exploding. Constant optimization is required to survive, but most webshops don't have the resources for it," explains Andreas Busch. "We've created a solution that does all the heavy lifting automatically."

From Covid Boredom to Meaningful AI

The interest in AI started during the COVID-19 lockdown in 2020, when then 20-year-old Andreas Busch and Mathias Fenger-Eriksen sat isolated in their new apartment in Aarhus, programming for fun. What started as a pastime quickly became a passion for finding technical solutions to manual tasks, and soon they had assembled an entire team that participated in programming competitions together.

The team dropped both their studies and competitions back in 2023 when Cernel was founded to pursue the vision of automating all tedious e-commerce tasks, so time could instead be spent on meaningful and creative tasks. "We haven't met a single person who thinks writing 1,000 product descriptions is meaningful work," adds Busch.

Prominent Investors See the Potential

Cernel is riding a momentum in the e-commerce industry, which several prominent investors have also recognized.

"What's unique about Cernel is the combination of deep technical innovation and practical problem-solving," says Jesper Hvejsel, who after his exit from Firtal Group to Matas has invested in Cernel.

"As an owner of several webshops, I know how many resources are wasted on manual work. Cernel's AI agents free up resources and allow us to focus on what we do best: running our business."

Christian Vinther, Investment Director at Founderment, adds: "The Cernel team is technically skilled, curious, and ambitious – exactly the founder DNA we look for when we invest."

Making Danish Webshops Visible Abroad

"We see enormous potential in Danish webshops that perform well domestically but lag behind internationally," explains Andreas Busch. "We're changing that now. When a webshop wants to grow in the German market, for example, our AI agents automatically analyze local search behavior and competitive landscape. They then create customized content and upload it to the website. It's like having a local marketing department in each country."

Cernel has, for instance, helped Viamaja grow from 0 to 7,000 monthly organic clicks in Sweden - solely through localized content.

Cernel Strengthened for Future Growth

With the capital and expertise from their new investors, Cernel is ready for the next step. "We're fortunate to bring on investors with such extensive experience in our field. They bring valuable expertise in areas we need for our continued development. With the added capital, we can now accelerate our scaling to reach larger customers - including internationally," says CEO Andreas Busch.