Freeform Raises $67M for AI Manufacturing
Freeform, a company building a laser AI manufacturing platform, has raised a $67 million Series B round. The funding shows strong investor appetite for startups that apply AI and automation to physical industries like manufacturing and industrial production.
- The company was founded by former SpaceX engineers Erik Palitsch and Thomas Ronacher, who led projects on the Merlin and Raptor rocket engines. Their experience trying to use traditional 3D metal printing for aerospace parts revealed its limitations in quality, speed, and cost, leading them to start Freeform. - Freeform's approach involves building what it calls "the world's first AI-native, autonomous metal 3D printing factory." This system uses advanced sensors and machine learning to control the manufacturing process in real-time, aiming to guarantee precision and scalability. - To power its AI, the company operates data center-grade infrastructure, including Nvidia H200 GPU clusters, directly within its manufacturing facility. This allows for real-time physics simulations that inform and adapt the printing process on the fly to prevent defects. - The $67 million Series B round included a diverse group of investors such as Founders Fund, Two Sigma Ventures, and NVentures, which is NVIDIA's venture capital arm. This funding brings the company's total raised capital to over $100 million. - The new capital is intended to upgrade Freeform's current "GoldenEye" printing system to a next-generation version called "Skyfall." The goal for Skyfall is to employ hundreds of lasers to produce thousands of kilograms of metal components daily, a significant increase in production scale. - Freeform operates on a "manufacturing as a service" model rather than selling its printers. The company already supplies mission-critical parts to customers in the aerospace, automotive, and energy sectors, including SpaceX.
