- PreScalar has raised $7 million in seed financing, with Dynamo Ventures and BMW i Ventures leading the round.
- The company’s modular test stations let manufacturers test, update, and track firmware directly on the production line.
- The founders previously worked at Cruise, Waymo, and Rivian and developed similar systems there.
Parts often arrive at production lines with outdated firmware, and many factories deal with this by either reprogramming them manually or sending the parts back. PreScalar‘s test hardware solves this problem, and the company has raised $7 million in seed funding to expand its solution.
Dynamo Ventures and BMW i Ventures jointly led the fundraising, with Blue Wire Capital, Uplift Ventures, and Antler also taking part.
Turning in-house tools into a product
Skyler Salman, co-founder and CEO, led testing at Cruise, Rivian, Waymo, and Google. Ben Fredrickson, the other co-founder and CTO, developed safety-critical software at Cruise, Auris, and Remedy Robotics. John Cathcart, who is also a co-founder and COO, oversaw product launches at Cruise, Lucid, SF Motors, and Chrysler.
All the founders built manufacturing infrastructure at well-resourced companies, and PreScalar, founded in 2025, now offers it as a product. The hardware can start with a single test station and then expand along the production line.
The system combines the test workflows, firmware management, and data collection into a single dataset. The more production lines, products, and suppliers that use it, the clearer manufacturers’ views become of every device.
“Hardware has fundamentally changed, but the way we manufacture it hasn’t kept up. We built PreScalar because we lived this problem ourselves. This funding allows us to bring infrastructure once reserved for the most sophisticated engineering teams to manufacturers at scale, giving them a better way to test, deploy software, and understand every device moving through production,” said Salman.
The clients are fast-growing technology companies and large international manufacturers, although no specific names have been given. At Antler’s Spring 2026 US portfolio showcase, PreScalar announced that it had secured pilot contracts worth more than $100,000 with a leading AV company and an electronics manufacturer, together with a signed agreement for further expansion.
Why investors see an opportunity
PreScalar specializes in software-defined hardware, including autonomous vehicles, the automotive industry, robotics, consumer electronics, and defence.
The global market for automotive software and electronics could amount to $519 billion by 2035, according to McKinsey. Many factories producing these vehicles were built to manufacture physical products rather than to carry out routine firmware updates.
“The most sophisticated hardware companies have spent years and enormous resources building this infrastructure themselves. Everyone else has been left stitching together legacy tools or building from scratch. PreScalar is building the system that closes that loop, allowing manufacturers to continuously learn from products in the field and improve how they’re tested and built,” said Santosh Sankar, managing partner at Dynamo Ventures.
Kasper Sage, managing partner at BMW i Ventures, added, “The best hardware companies in the world are defined by what comes off their production lines. As every product becomes software-defined, the infrastructure to deploy, test, and trace that software at manufacturing scale becomes as critical as the product itself. PreScalar is building that infrastructure, and the founding team is uniquely positioned to do it.”
A busy factory, a tight window
Other companies besides PreScalar offer software for manufacturing plants; Instrumental has raised funds for its AI-based defect detection system, and National Instruments, now part of Emerson, has provided test and measurement tools for many years.
PreScalar focuses on firmware deployment and adding traceability to the test station.
Investment is likewise increasing in the physical applications of AI. This includes Hadrian’s $1.4 billion raise to modernise US manufacturing, Senra Systems’ $65 million raise for wire harnesses, and Morphotonics’ €40 million for manufacturing AI glasses. For more on Europe’s effort to bring AI into factories, see our analysis.
The money raised will fund research and development, hardware manufacturing, hiring, and commercial deployments. PreScalar’s future will depend on whether major manufacturers use its stations beyond the pilot programs.
