London-based Ai Build, an additive manufacturing (also known as 3D printing) software company, has raised $8.5 million in Series A funding. The round was led by IQ Capital, which recently invested in Signaloid, AccelerComm and Apperio. It also saw participation from Japanese optical technology multinational Nikon as a strategic investor alongside its existing investors SuperSeed, ACT Venture Partners, Atlas Ventures and Seedcamp.
Ai Build will use the investment to accelerate its product roadmap, allowing it to onboard more customers with higher levels of automation and AI capabilities. Also, it will fuel expansion into North America and continue its expansion across Europe.
Sustainable and cost-effective manufacturing
Founded in 2015 by architects Daghan Cam and Michail Desyllas, Ai Build develops AI to make manufacturing easy, smart, sustainable and affordable. The company offers manufacturers a cloud-based solution, designed to reduce costs and material waste in the additive manufacturing process, which was laborious and error-prone.
Already, Ai Build has partnered with major manufacturing firms, including Boeing to expand the use of additive manufacturing in large-scale industrial applications across industries such as energy and aerospace. Early customers of Ai Build have experienced significant improvements, including a 65% decrease in failed production attempts and a 90% increase in overall build efficiency.
As Ai Build adds more machines, users, and manufacturing data to its platform, the system’s capabilities and level of automation continue to increase. The company aims to eliminate all inefficiencies caused by human error in order to make the manufacturing process simpler, more intelligent, sustainable, and cost-effective.
“Despite its clear economic and environmental benefits, manufacturers have difficulty implementing additive manufacturing at an industrial scale. This is due to concerns about its reliability and ease of adoption. We believe that automation and smart use of data is the solution to this problem. By partnering with Nikon as a leading technology provider who has a grand vision for the future of manufacturing, and IQ Capital as a deep-tech investor with proven track record of supporting global businesses, we are well positioned to achieve our goal for automating the factories of the future,” said Daghan Cam, Co-founder and CEO of Ai Build.
“It is a great privilege to be supported by investors and partners that share and understand the same vision as us. We are consistently learning and evolving the Ai Build platform to be ready for this rapidly growing market. This funding round comes at a perfect time for us to accelerate the adoption of additive manufacturing at scale and innovate together with our clients, partners, and investors,” said Michail Desyllas, Co-founder and COO of Ai Build.
“We’re excited to be working with Ai Build as they bring their automated platform for additive manufacturing to the global market. AM represents a $16bn segment of the manufacturing industry and is growing rapidly at over 20% per annum. This is an exciting time of transformation for the industry and we believe that AI Build will play a critical role in unlocking its potential,” said Mason Sinclair, Principal of IQ Capital.
“Ai Build offers extensive solutions that enable automated workflows, bringing efficiency and sustainability to the field of AM. In tandem with Nikon’s capabilities, together we will deliver innovative solutions that revolutionise AM,” said Yuichi Shibazaki, Corporate Vice President and Officer in charge of the Next Generation Project Division at Nikon.
