There is an evident need to complement embedded critical control logic with AI inference, but today’s AI-capable hardware, software, and processes are primarily targeted towards the needs of cloud-centric actors. Telecom and defense airspace industries, which make heavy use of specialized hardware, face the challenge of manually hand-tuning AI workloads and hardware, presenting an unprecedented cost and complexity due to the diversity and sheer number of deployed instances. Furthermore, embedded AI functionality must not adversely affect real-time and safety requirements of the critical business logic. To address this, end-to-end AI pipelines for critical platforms are needed to automate the adaption of networks to fit into resource-constrained devices under critical and real-time constraints, while remaining interoperable with de-facto standard AI tools and frameworks used in the cloud. We present two industrial applications where such solutions are needed to bring AI to critical and resource-constrained hardware, and a generalized end-to-end AI pipeline that addresses these needs. Crucial steps to realize it are taken in the industry-academia collaborative FASTER-AI project. © 2024 EDAA.