Apprentice

Apprentice is a Jersey City, New Jersey software company that sells an AI-native manufacturing platform. Its product suite includes a Manufacturing Execution System (MES) for paperless production, a Laboratory Execution System (LES) for QC testing workflows, a Connected Manufacturing Network (CMN) linking sites, teams and external partners, R&D and Manufacturing Intelligence/analytics, virtual remote collaboration tooling, integrations with plant systems and equipment, and professional services for deployment.

The company's proprietary model, Apprentice 4.1, is described as trained and constrained for manufacturing use with compliance controls and human-in-the-loop accountability. It is offered two ways: as A1, a standalone agent application that connects to existing manufacturing systems and responds continuously to events, schedules and file changes; or natively embedded within the Manufacturing Suite. A1 is packaged as role-specific agents — operator, quality, MSAT, supervisor, engineering, maintenance, supply chain, manufacturing systems and quality systems — covering tasks such as alarm response and troubleshooting, deviation investigation, CAPA reporting, recipe authoring, OEE analysis, audit readiness, shift handoffs and tech transfer.

Apprentice began as an industrial augmented reality platform for biopharma R&D and manufacturing, delivered partly through smart glasses (Google Glass, Microsoft HoloLens, Epson Moverio) with three components: Tandem for remote assistance between on-site and off-site technicians, Manuals for hands-free access to procedures and schematics, and BioCapture for recording analog and digital process data. In February 2018 it released an all-day workflow tool providing step-by-step augmented reality guidance, computer vision capture and what the company called the industry's first conversational AI AR platform, plus out-of-the-box integrations with document and content management systems and an API for ingesting data from in-house applications.

Founding story

Apprentice was co-founded in December 2014 by Angelo Stracquatanio, Gary Pignata and Alexandra Buttke, with the aim of applying artificial intelligence and augmented reality to the workflows of scientists in pharmaceutical labs and engineers in manufacturing suites. Stracquatanio, the CEO, framed the approach as augmenting rather than replacing human ability, and said early customers collaborated closely on shaping the product.

Business model

Apprentice licenses enterprise manufacturing software — a suite of execution, laboratory, network and analytics applications plus an AI agent product — and complements it with professional services for deployment and system and equipment integrations.

Traction

The company reports its platform is used by manufacturers including Moderna, Catalent and Gilead and executes over 30 million requests per month. It had 20 employees in New Jersey at the time of its 2017 seed round, and had begun selling its software and expanding its client base then.

Latest developments

In January 2026 Apprentice acquired Ganymede.bio to add advanced analytics and manufacturing intelligence spanning R&D through the commercial lifecycle. In March 2026 it launched the Apprentice 4.1 model and the A1 Agent, a standalone agentic application, and expanded its industry marketing beyond life sciences into a broad range of discrete and process manufacturing verticals.