Premier Labs, a corporate venture studio affiliated with Pittsburgh-based Premier Automation, an industrial systems integrator, recently launched RAMP AI as its first operating company.
Premier Labs operates a stage-gated formation process for identifying, validating, and building industrial technology companies from inside real production environments.
“RAMP is proof that the system works,” Joel Reed, Premier Labs president, said. “We didn’t start with a product idea. We started inside facilities, listening to the people who live with these problems every day. RAMP came out of that process — and reaching a paid pilot on minimal capital is exactly the kind of capital efficiency this model is designed to produce.”
RAMP AI is an industrial software that interprets the intelligence already embedded in a machine’s PLC code, alarm history and fault records. It puts the reasoning power of an engineer into plain-language root-cause guidance that any technician can understand.
The knowledge gap between the most experienced technicians and new hires can cost hours per downtime incident, and these incidents cost tens of thousands of dollars per hour. RAMP AI addresses this by ensuring troubleshooting knowledge is evenly distributed. The system also ensures companies do not need to replace equipment or retrain teams from scratch.
Premier Labs’s announcement coincides with Automate 2026, a robotics and automation event, held in Chicago this week.