The Startup Gallery
105industrial AI and engineering software startups we've covered, grouped by investment thesis. Click any card to read the original LinkedIn deep-dive.
Last updated May 9, 2026
Adaptive Manufacturing (AM, CAM, CNC)
11 companies
DigitalCNC
CAM is lying to you. Not intentionally. It’s just blind. Rob Ward (DigitalCNC) put it bluntly: most CAM systems generate toolpaths without considering what will actually happen on…
Instruct3D
Henry Saunders is not building “AI for manufacturing” theater 🎭 . At Instruct3D, he is combining hyperspectral imaging with physics-informed AI to make additive manufacturing…
Lambda Function
✈️ AI is hitting the machine shop. Again! Meet Lambda Function (founded 2020 by Tanmay Aggarwal) — tackling the skills shortage in high-complexity CNC machining by automating the…
LimitlessCNC
🏃 David Priev was sprinting between Israeli machine shops during wartime. He had the parts designed. They had the machines. But nobody could program them fast enough. I had a…
Manukai
Switzerland doesn’t just make precision parts. It encodes decades of manufacturing know-how into repeatable processes. That’s why Pascal Weber’s story (ETH Zürich → PhD → 200+…
Neuramill
🏭 Everyone talks about “AI for manufacturing.” Very few are actually doing the hard part. What Nistha Mitra and Nick Khormaei are building at Neuramill is quietly one of the most…
Paperless Parts
Most manufacturers do not lose quotes because they cannot make the part. They lose because quoting is still trapped in spreadsheets, tribal knowledge, overloaded estimators, and…
Productive Machines
He spent 15 years fixing machining problems with “trial-and-error”… then built the thing CAM was missing. Most CAM software is obsessed with geometry: ⚠️ collisions ⚠️ toolpath…
SelectAM
Most Additive Manufacturing platforms start with the machine. SelectAM starts with the decision. I learned this directly after speaking with Kalle A. Lepola. What makes SelectAM…
SP3D
🪄 Imagine converting decades of 2D drawings into precise 3D models—with a single click. That’s the digital leap Spare Parts 3D is delivering. Meet Spare Parts 3D (SP3D), led by…
up2parts GmbH
🚀 Unlocking Efficiency in Manufacturing: Insights from a Startup Conversation In a recent discussion with Marco Bauer, co-founder of up2parts GmbH, we explored the dynamic…
Augmented Operations (MOM, CMMS, AR/VR, SLM)
6 companies
Dirac
💥 Filip just casually dropped how Dirac is revolutionizing work instructions. I had an insightful interview with Filip Aronshtein, Founder and CEO of fire-hot startup Dirac,…
GroundControl
One of the most overlooked software categories in manufacturing is also one of the most painful: quality paperwork. Mehul Shah told me GroundControl is going after a very specific…
InUse
🤖 Amid the intelligent industry revolution—“making your machines speak to boost performance and cut the ecological footprint.” Yesterday, I had the privilege to interview Laurent…
Software Defined Automation
Most “digital transformation” in factories is still UI on top of chaos. In my chat with Josef Waltl, his core point was blunt: automation is overdue for the same shift IT went…
Twinzo
🚀 Supercharge Your Factory Floor: Twinzo Is Changing the Game! 🚀 What if you could put your entire factory in the palm of your hand and see—instantly—where every machine, line,…
XMPro
🚀 Ever wonder how the world’s largest miners and industrial giants are leapfrogging into the future? Meet XMPro! Led by Pieter van Schalkwyk, XMPro isn’t your typical…
Bleeding Edge BIM (AEC/BIM)
3 companies
Designair
“CAD like Netflix” sounds cute. DesignAir is making it practical. Founder and CEO Don Rekko explained to me this morning that most engineering teams still rely on heavyweight…
Qonic
🏗️ Most “BIM” workflows are still: 2D drawings + PDFs + meetings… and then everyone argues about “the latest version.” Jacob De Sutter is building Qonic to kill that loop. What…
Raven
🤔 Most “AI for design” startups make the same mistake: They build a new platform… then wonder why adoption is slow. Raven is taking the opposite route — and that’s the…
Cognitive Thread (PLM, MBSE, DT)
23 companies
Aletiq
🇫🇷 Inside the next-gen French PLM that’s breaking the mold I had a deep dive with Geoffrey Ricard, Co-Founder & CEO of Aletiq. Here’s what’s stirring the future of engineering…
BetterFutures
Everyone says “AI will transform manufacturing.” Anthony Mc Loughlin is asking a more uncomfortable question: What if the real problem isn’t AI — but how we decide the future in…
Bild
⚙️ “Git for CAD” is not a metaphor anymore. It’s a product. I just spoke with Pradyut Paul, Founder & CEO of Bild — ex-Apple PM, (his co-founder comes from Meta — and this one’s…
Canvas Envision
🕴 New CEO. Old assumptions challenged. My conversation with my old friend Garth Coleman, newly minted CEO of Canvas GFX , wasn’t about “AI features” or roadmap fluff. It was…
Cognyx
🚀 Reinventing Product Lifecycle Management with Cognyx 🚀 In the fast-changing world of manufacturing and engineering, Cognyx is building the future. I was inspired by my recent…
CoLab
⚙️ Engineering is about to get rebuilt. 🏗️ Not because CAD gets “smarter.” But rather because where decisions happen is changing. In my catch-up with Adam Keating, Founder and…
Dalus
🚀 Unlocking the Future of the Model-Based Enterprise: A Conversation with Sebastian Völki of Dalus 🚀 I had an insightful discussion with Sebastian Völkl, co-founder of Dalus, a…
Dessia
💡 AI is Rewriting the Engineering Rulebook: An interview with Dessia Technologies CEO Jean-Pierre Roux I interviewed Jean-Pierre Roux, CEO of Dessia Technologies, a French 🇫🇷…
Elevating Patterns
💥 Two Ex-SAP, ex-Aras Engineers Just Built What the Big 3 PLM Vendors Can
EverCurrent
🚀 Meet Ye Wang, founder of EverCurrent — the AI layer turning tribal knowledge into team intelligence. Before founding EverCurrent, Ye helped build Autodesk’s 3D printing R&D…
explore
Markus Herhoffer (CTO) of German digital thread startup EXP Software GmbH gave me one of the clearest “what we actually do” explanations I’ve heard in the Digital Thread / Digital…
Flow Engineering
“Digital transformation” is starting to sound like the old language. After speaking with Pari Singh, Founder & CEO of Flow Engineering, I think the sharper phrase is AI…
Makersite Gmbh
Makersite doesn’t start with a “green” story. It starts with an ugly truth every manufacturer knows… but almost nobody says out loud: Most companies don’t actually know what their…
OpenBOM
🧠 While everyone
ProductFlo
Engineers don’t resist AI because it’s new - they resist it when it creates more work than it saves. Loved this post by Michael Finocchiaro on why trust, not speed, will drive…
Quarter20
⚕️ How One Little Screw Inspired Us to Fix Hardware’s Biggest Problem – In the Words of Mai & Addy, Founders of Quarter20 “We used to joke that I’m not just a mechanical…
Sibe.io
🚀 Transforming PDM at Sibe.io! I recently had the opportunity with advisor Vadim Galeev to discuss how Sibe is transforming the Product Data Management (PDM) landscape with their…
SPREAD
Most “AI for PLM” pitches sound like this: “We’ll summarize your CAD and fix your BOM.” Félix Chrétien’s take on SPREAD AI is very different: Stop treating product data like…
SyncTwin
Michael Wagner’s founder story is basically this: The digital twin industry is trapped in closed PLM stacks. So he built SyncTwin to make industrial twins portable, open, and…
SysGit
🚀 Hardware at the Speed of Software: How SysGit is Transforming Engineering and Acquisition In the rapidly evolving world of engineering, startups are pushing the boundaries of…
trace.space
🚀 I just interviewed the CEO who
Uncountable
Just spoke with Noel Hollingsworth (Uncountable Inc.) and it clarified something I keep seeing across industrial “digital transformation”: Companies say they have ELN/LIMS… then…
Violet Labs
I spoke with Lucy Hoag about Violet Labs, and the problem they are going after is painfully real. Hardware engineering is still far too fragmented. CAD lives in one world.…
Design Intelligence (CAD)
29 companies
Allspice.io
🤔 What if circuit design got GitHub, GitLab, CI/CD and AI code review… [ Startup #102 ] Why are so many hardware teams still trying to manage critical design work with…
Axial3D
🚀 Catching Up with Innovation: 2D to 3D Medical Imaging with Axial3D! 🚀 Had an inspiring conversation with Roger Johnston / DBT Export Champion of Axial3D about their…
Bench
Every engineering leader talks about “AI for CAD.” Martin Bielicki told me Bench is going after the two workflows engineers hate doing… because they’re expensive, slow, and…
C-Infinity
🫢 Most manufacturers think C2 continuity is "good enough." Sai Nelaturi just explained why that
Campfire
Most people still think “immersive tech” in engineering means flashy demos, bulky headsets, and marketing videos that never survive contact with reality. Jay Wright of Campfire…
Cognitive Design by CDS
🎯 You don’t often talk to someone rethinking how engineers design for manufacturing. I sat down with Vincent Ung, Co-Founder and COO of Cognitive Design by CDS in Toulouse,…
Compute Maritime
🚢 How Compute Maritime Is Transforming Maritime Design with AI 🚢 Meet Shahroz Khan, a trailblazer whose journey began as a mechanical engineering student fascinated by ships and…
COSMON
💡 “Cursor for Engineers” I just learned about Cosmon directly from founder Rui Aguiar, and I have to say I came away excited! Most AI copilots live inside one vendor’s walled…
CustoMED
🩺✨ From 4 weeks to 2 hours: how Customed is transforming patient-specific surgery I recently had the chance to sit down with or benifla, founder of CustoMED, a medtech startup…
DGG - The 3D Pipeline Company
Love when a convo cuts through the buzzwords. Just met with Max Limper of DGG - Creators of RapidPipeline on the real work of getting big, messy CAD models render-ready—fast.…
DraftAid
🔥 Disrupting Engineering: How DraftAid is Redefining CAD with AI! 🔥 Just wrapped an insightful interview with Mohammed Al-arnawoot from DraftAid, a company on a mission to…
Drafter
⚠️ Your $120K engineers are spending 40% of their time on drawings. And 1 in 3 has a critical error that costs you $50K-$2M to fix. Here
Hestus
🚀 Exciting times at Hestus! 🚀 I had the pleasure of joining Sohrab Haghighat, founder of Hestus for a demo of his forthcoming innovative design tool, Sketch Helper, which…
InfinitForm
🚀 Transforming the Future of Design and Manufacturing! 🚀 In a recent enlightening discussion Michael Bogomolny, Ph.D., we dove deep into the challenges and innovations shaping…
Infinitive
🚀 Imagine configuring and buying a fully custom, complex product—hardware, electronics, even furniture—with the same ease as ordering pizza. I had the distinct pleasure to meet…
Leo AI
🚀 A 20+ year aerospace veteran just did in 1.5 hours what used to take his team of 3 engineers THREE WEEKS. Meet Leo AI - the first AI copilot built specifically for mechanical…
Makistry
He built a CAD startup before he can legally toast it 🍾 Most founders celebrate launch day with champagne. Parth Mehta can’t. He isn’t 21 yet. And he already has a legit CAD…
NexCAD
🚀 AI-Powered Engineering: NexCAD is Shaping the Future of CAD 🚀 I had the pleasure of interviewing Uzair Syed the founder of NexCAD.ai, a startup that’s redefining how engineers…
nTop
🛫 nTop’s Implicit Modeling Is Redefining CAD’s Future - a new shot fired in the Kernel Wars! In an exclusive interview with Bradley Rothenberg, Founder and CEO of nTop, I got…
Optellix
Hot take from Deep (Ratnadeep Mukkirwar): 3D is the richest dataset in manufacturing… and we’ve locked it behind CAD/PLM licenses. So downstream teams still work blind in 2D.…
Plasticity
⚙️ Most CAD startups are pitching AI-first. Plasticity
Rev1
Most AI in engineering is still chasing flashy demos. REV1 (YC W26) is going after one of the most painful, repetitive, high-consequence bottlenecks in hardware development:…
Satory XR
🚀 Meet Satori XR — the startup turning dusty CAD files into powerful sales weapons Here
Shapr3D
🔮 What if a single moment of inspiration could change the future of CAD? When István Csanády, founder and CEO of Shapr3D, first picked up an iPad, he quickly realized its…
Spherene
🚀 Rethinking What’s Possible Inside Every Part: The Spherene Revolution [ CORRECTED! ] “Most CAD platforms obsess about the exterior—the curves, the surfaces, the way things look…
Threedy
🎇 Revolutionizing 3D Visualization: Threedy’s Journey from Research to Real-World Impact What if you could stream complex 3D engineering data instantly, right in your browser,…
Vertex
Most companies do not have a 3D modeling problem. They have a secure 3D access problem. That was the core insight from my conversation with Dan Murray, founder of Vertex Software.…
Zephyra
Most “quality” software in manufacturing does this: ✅ Shows you what’s wrong ❌ Then leaves you alone to figure out how to fix it. When I spoke with Ahmed Dagani (ZEPHYRA), the…
Zoo
🍭 CAD “Text-to-3D” is starting to feel like a commodity. But most of what’s shipping is mesh/voxel output you can’t really engineer with. What I heard from Jordan Noone at Zoo is…
Extreme Analysis (CAE, CFD, FEA, QC)
13 companies
BQP
🚀 Ready to see what happens when quantum-inspired algorithms meet real-world engineering? Hopefully, our podcast with Quanscient founders Juha and Valttierri on Sept 23 gave you…
CognaSIM
Simulation is broken for most engineering teams. Not because the solvers are bad. Because the workflow is hostile: different UIs, different nomenclature, endless setup, tribal…
Feather Solutions
🚀 Meet Matt Ferraro and Josh VonFricken: Two ex-Planet Labs engineers who quit their jobs to take on ANSYS Their weapon? "It
Key Ward
🧠 Industrial AI doesn’t fail because of algorithms. It fails because companies aren’t ready for it. That’s the sharpest takeaway from my conversation with Maxime Bunel,…
Luminary Cloud
Can you believe the biggest simulation time sink isn’t solving physics — it’s the repeat work around it? I talked with Pete Schlampp (Luminary Cloud), and the theme was clear:…
Metafold 3D
Your CAD knows shapes. Your business needs answers. I sat down with Elissa Ross, PhD to unpack how her company Metafold 3D turns raw geometry into business-critical intelligence.…
Neural Concept
💰 You may have seen the news last month: a Swiss simulation startup raised a whopping $100M of VC from Goldman-Sachs. Here
Nullspace, Inc
🚀 From aerospace engineering to deep-tech breakthrough Meet Masha Petrova, Ph.D. — a leader who’s taken her 15+ years in simulation software and engineering design tools and is…
Quanscient
👋 Meet Juha Riippi: the unstoppable CEO behind Quanscient, one of Europe’s boldest quantum simulation startups shaking up advanced engineering. If you haven’t met Juha or heard…
Secondmind
🚗 Secondmind in 200 seconds: What Gary Brotman is really building! Hook: Everyone’s chasing “AI for automotive.” Gary Brotman’s Secondmind is shipping something more pragmatic:…
Synera
[ 🎤 I’ll be a speaker at Synera’s Engineer the Future online event on October 15th! ] 🚀 I had the chance to interview Daniel Löwen, Marketing, SDR & Business Operations Lead of…
ToffeeX
Most “generative design” tools are still doing one of two things: Pretty geometry Slow simulation loops that kill iteration speed In my chat with Thomas Rees, he made a strong…
Zibra
Everyone wants AI for simulation. But almost nobody talks about the brutal infrastructure problem underneath it: 3D data is enormous, heterogeneous, and painful to use for model…
Factory Futures (MES, IIOT)
14 companies
Acceleer
Davy Demeyer spent 20 years inside industrial automation—and realized something brutally obvious: Automation engineers don’t automate their own work. That contradiction is what…
AnyLog
🤔 Most industrial AI vendors still assume the same thing: move the data first, analyze it later. Mark Davidson told me AnyLog is built on the opposite premise: keep the data…
Authentise
🚀 Unlocking the Future of Engineering with Authentise! [UPDATED WITH BETTER PHOTO!] I had an insightful conversation with Andre Wegner, CEO of Authentise, a company at the…
Epsilon3
🚀 What happens when a space-obsessed startup builds the ultimate tools for the most demanding engineering missions? You get Epsilon3: the software backbone powering…
First Resonance
🏭 "We
Flexxbotics
Robots don’t scale because our factories don’t talk. I just sat down with Tyler Bouchard, Founder & CEO of Flexxbotics, and we dug into the messy truth behind AI + robotics on…
Fuuz
🚀 Ever wonder how the future of manufacturing begins? Meet Fuuz: Craig Scott’s bootstrapped powerhouse that’s quietly revolutionizing how factories and process plants manage…
HighByte
Everyone wants “AI in the factory.” Aron Semle explained why most of that is theatre until you solve one brutally ugly problem: Factory data is unreadable. Not because it’s…
MontBlancAI
🚀 MontBlancAI: the anti-hype blueprint for industrial AI for Process Industries Most “AI for manufacturing” companies start with dashboards and demos. Markus Guerster…
OpsMate
🚀 From Factory Data to Factory Intelligence 🧠 Just had an incredible conversation with Howard Heppelmann, Co-Founder and CEO, and James Zhang, Co-Founder and CPO, about OpsMate…
Quix
🏎️ Formula 1 teams generate 300GB of test data per race weekend. Michael Rosam watched it all go to waste. So he left McLaren F1 to fix it. I has a great talk with Michael Rosam,…
Rhize Manufacturing Hub
Every founder pitch in manufacturing sounds the same right now: “Connect your systems.” “Create a unified namespace.” “Build a knowledge graph.” “Add AI.” Kirt Anderson has seen…
TDEngine
🔥 From Time-Series to AI-Native Industrial Data Just wrapped a fascinating talk with Jeff Tao, founder & CEO of TDengine, a name you’ll be hearing a lot more in the industrial…
TwinThread
🔥 "We give process engineers the unlock code." That
Knowledge Engineering (R&D, Learning)
1 company
SW+HW=Innovation (Robotics, Drones)
1 company
Streamlined Supply Chain (SCM)
4 companies
Bardin
Industrial AI is getting real when it stops trying to “transform the enterprise” and starts fixing painful work for one team at a time. That is what stood out from my conversation…
Jiga
Engineers don’t hate sourcing custom parts. They hate the admin theater around it: endless RFQs, supplier chasing, “where’s my quote?”, and the quiet panic when a critical part…
Mak3r.ai
🚀 Transforming Manufacturing with mak3r.ai: One-Stop Digital Shop for Machine Shops 🚀 Had a fascinating conversation with RamKumar Revanur, founder of Mak3r. Ai, about their…
Omnae
Boeing had 18 Dreamliners stuck on the tarmac. 🛫 Billions in invoicing they couldn
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