Machina Labs brings in $32M for robotic sheet metal forming

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Machina Labs, a company that combines AI and robotics to rapidly manufacture advanced composite and metal products, brought in $32 million in Series B funding. This brings the company’s total funding to date to $45 million.

The company plans to use the latest round of funding to meet accelerating customer demands, further intensify its research initiatives, and continue delivering innovative systems that exceed customer expectations.

NVentures, a new investor in the company and NVIDIA’s venture capital arm, along with returning investor Innovation Endeavors led the round, which also included participation from other new and existing investors.

Machina’s patented manufacturing platform’s first process is robotic sheet forming. The system uses material- and geometry-agnostic technology to outperform traditional sheet-forming methods that rely on custom molds or dies.

“With their deep heritage in artificial intelligence and high-performance computing, we are looking forward to NVIDIA’s support as we further develop our AI and simulation capabilities,” Edward Mehr, CEO and co-founder of Machina Labs, said. ”We are also thrilled to see our current partner Innovation Endeavors continue to support our vision. This Series B funding underscores the transformative potential of merging robotics and artificial intelligence. With this support, we are poised to develop the next generation of manufacturing floors; ones that can easily remake production with no hardware or tooling changes, but only requiring software modification.”

Machina Labs aims to allow factories to not be tied to specific products with limited capabilities. Instead, the factories can be configured via software to power on-demand manufacturing and unlock innovation in manufacturing.

The company combines the latest advances in AI and robotics to deliver finished metal projects in just days instead of months or years. It does this by using robots the way a blacksmith uses a hammer to manufacture different designs and materials. This gives manufacturers unprecedented flexibility and agility.

“AI is rapidly accelerating industries across the global economy, including manufacturing,” Mohamed “Sid” Siddeek, Corporate Vice President and Head of NVentures, said. “Machina Labs’s work to apply advanced computing and robotics to sheet-metal formation enables companies to operate manufacturing facilities with substantially improved efficiency and broadened capabilities.”

Machina Labs’ robots use an array of AI-driven sensors to gather data and manipulate sheet metal to form parts. For each unit the company makes, it creates a digital twin with all relevant process information. This provides accurate process characterization and part qualification information.

The company creates metal parts for the automotive, aerospace, defense, heavy machinery, electrical and architecture industries.