Manufacturing Startups funded by Y Combinator (YC) 2026

Orvixo uses AI to build reactive end-to-end planning and optimisation models for manufacturers.

Every custom part starts as a 2D drawing, and every drawing has to be reviewed before manufacturing begins. Today that means senior engineers checking dimensions, tolerances, and GD&T callouts by hand against ASME and ISO standards. It takes days, it bottlenecks release, and errors still slip through to the shop floor, where they become scrap and rework. Hera automates design review. Upload a drawing, get back every violation with the standard it breaks and where. Engineer-to-order manufacturers in aerospace, medical devices, and pressure vessels use Hera to release drawings faster and catch mistakes before they cost real money.

Bizmark is the bespoke operating system for manufacturers. It connects the systems, spreadsheets, and knowledge a company already has, and turns them into optimized decisions and automated workflows: quotes priced in minutes, schedules that reflow when a machine goes down, inventory balanced between service levels and cash. Working product in weeks, not years. Building it with our first customers now.

Donkey is the modern trading company. We buy straight from Chinese factories and sell delivered to US importers: one USD price to their dock, duty paid, our own inspectors on the factory floor before the factory gets paid. Most importers buy through trading companies that mark up every container 15 to 30 percent and never reveal the factory. US customs records are public. Almost nobody reads them, so we arrive already knowing their supply lane. They send one photo of a part they reorder. We name the factory that actually makes it and beat their landed cost in 72 hours, or they keep their supplier. We take title, run the inspection, move the money, and offer credit-insured net-45 terms to qualified buyers. The old trading giants ran this coordination with tens of thousands of people. Our machine runs it with a handful, and every settled order compounds the pricing and reliability data the next one runs on. Team in SF and China, English and Mandarin. Know a US importer buying from China? Send them our way: one photo of a part, and we will name their factory. donkey.trade

Singularity is answering humanity’s call to engineer counter-weapon systems at scale. We build to protect people on the battlefield and at home.

ProvenMetal manufactures the fastest circuit boards in the United States. Domestic circuit board manufacturing is slow and expensive, and while reshoring is happening, the supply chain isn't there yet. We automate the bottlenecks - part procurement, DFM review, and assembly - delivering circuit boards in days instead of weeks.

Greypoint Industries builds mass-produced autonomous interceptors that defeat drone saturation for a fraction of the cost of the targets. We are developing a soldier-deployable, fire-and-forget interceptor built to give Western and allied forces the ammunition to counter mass drone swarm attacks.

Operon is the data intelligence layer for heavy industry. We ingest the messy documents a plant runs on (P&IDs, schematics, datasheets, scans) and turn them into one structured, queryable model of the facility. On top of it, engineers query their plant in natural language and build agentic workflows for safety, compliance, and design.

GUILD is making aerospace parts faster and cheaper than today’s defense supply chain. We win defense contracts, automate manufacturing, and deliver to the government's door. We’ve built an AI-native operating model for defense contracting: a company brain that connects requirements, pricing, supplier capability, compliance, manufacturing, finance, and delivery so each contract makes the next one faster and cheaper.

America does not just need more welders. It needs welding knowledge that can scale. The American Welding Society projects 320,500 new welding professionals will be needed by 2029, with about 80,000 jobs to be filled annually from 2025 to 2029. More than 157,000 current welding professionals are approaching retirement. Welders are only a small share of the skilled-trades workforce, but welding accounts for an outsized share of projected capability demand. The market calls it a labor shortage. AMR sees a learning bottleneck. We are building American-made robotic welding cells that combine computer vision to provide real-time seam tracking and post-weld inspection to turn welding from a scarce manual process into a closed-loop manufacturing system that learns from every weld as it happens.

Allus builds next-gen vision foundation models that bring real intelligence to manufacturing. Enabling factories to see, understand, and improve production in real time.

Bravi is building the AI operating system for home-services businesses, using AI-powered customer communication as the wedge. We replace the front office (calls, chats, follow-ups) with AI agents that never miss a lead, then layer an internal AI copilot that understands products, pricing, and technical documentation. We started with fenestration (shutters, windows, garage doors), a large, complex vertical with no modern software, before expanding to adjacent trades. Bravi is already live with leading installers and manufacturers across Europe and the US, turning missed demand into revenue.

Our agents run hardware engineering tasks that normally take hours or days in just a few minutes, allowing engineers to process 100x more data and information. Our platform allows hardware engineers to orchestrate agents for tasks such as analyzing failures across entire test campaigns, pulling the right data and KPIs from their databases, checking how conditions (like temperature or load) affect performance and reliability, and then document findings in reports and dashboards.

China and Russia control the world’s critical minerals. We can produce Titanium, Magnesium, Aluminum, Zirconium & Hafnium in the U.S. more profitably than any existing process, and carbon neutrally via co-production. Carbochlorination is the primary process for producing critical metals like titanium, hafnium, and zirconium, and was once the standard for magnesium. The problem: conventional carbochlorination relies on purchasing carbon feedstocks, wastes valuable byproducts, and is highly CO₂-intensive. Duranium changes this with a novel reactor that recycles CO₂ emissions back into feedstock (CO) while generating a valuable co-product (bleaching agents). This closed loop slashes emissions and delivers Chinese-level metal pricing without subsidies — unlocking the full potential of carbochlorination for U.S. critical mineral production.

Testing and certifying the hardware of the future

Paloma gives manufacturing companies an embedded team of engineers and ops experts who replace their manual operations with custom AI-native software.

Nox Metals is an AI-powered metals supplier powering modern American manufacturing at scale. We are building automated factories that turn raw metal into production-ready material faster, cheaper, and more reliably than legacy service centers.

Photonium is building software to automate optical system design. We supercharge optics experts with intelligent tooling to reduce costs and deliver faster. We handle the full design stack — from optimization, verification, sourcing, to prototyping — for AR/VR, quantum, biotech, metrology/chip fab, LiDAR, and more.

We manufacturing instruments and reagents that are purpose built for AI, automated labs, and personalized medicines.

chrt is a logistics platform for time-critical shipping. We enable businesses to deliver their most critical items same-day. Time-Critical Logistics is a $30B market growing at a 20% CAGR driven by growth in American healthcare and manufacturing. Businesses that place time-critical orders are enterprises who have urgent items they need to deliver ASAP. These orders are critical in nature and often require white glove service -- think therapeutic treatments for healthcare providers or specialized equipment for manufacturers. chrt builds the software for forwarders and professional couriers who pick up and deliver these orders. Couriers use chrt to coordinate and track their shipments, including a driver app and fleet management tools. Forwarders use chrt to dispatch couriers, book flights, and track time-critical orders from start to finish. Shippers use chrt to place these orders with their providers and to monitor everything. In addition, we also sell physical tracking devices that can be used to track valuable cargo or assets. This gives us full control of the shipment and allows us to provide shippers with end-to-end tracking. It also allows us to intervene early if we notice something is going wrong. We’re software engineers that became friends years ago at McKinsey. Kyle is an expert in Time-Critical Logistics, having led strategy at a leader in the space. Aaron is an expert at designing and implementing AI systems to handle complex coordination. We were shipping code together on nights and weekends for years before chrt; now we’re also shipping freight.

Lumari is the world's first AI-powered procurement automation platform purpose-built for direct materials and supply chain execution. Backed by Y Combinator, Lumari is a well-funded startup that deploys 100s of always-on AI agents that run sourcing workflows, manage RFQs, expedite purchase orders, and coordinate supplier communication end-to-end -- compressing cycle times and giving teams full visibility into active orders, RFQs, and supplier performance. Founded by engineers from Google, Tesla, Amazon, and Stripe who have built and scaled supply chain systems serving millions of users. Built to operate directly on top of existing tools and ERP systems, Lumari helps procurement teams move faster, eliminate operational bottlenecks, and build more resilient supply chains. No rip-and-replace, no supplier onboarding. Lumari handles the manual chase: quote follow-ups, PO confirmations, delivery status updates, and risk escalation. Lumari helps companies from Fortune 500s to fast-growing startups automate work from sourcing to delivery, streamline supplier communication and order management, and bring full visibility to their procurement operations. To learn more check out https://lumari.ai/

We're building an AI powered platform for engineers that are building new robots and machines. We allow users to invent and modify machine designs in a matter of minutes, not years. Ayna and Andy, the co-founders, met during their time at Harvard and started this in 2024 as their programs were wrapping up. We're commercializing 10+ years research done by our team at Harvard and MIT on this space. Our team wrote the very first papers on applying GenAI and optimization algorithms to compose robots from parts and applying computational design to fine tune machine designs. We're bringing in our deep knowledge of modifying equipment and integrating it into factories keenly understanding what makes hardware hard. We take in parts under consideration, constraints and tasks at hand and our algorithm formulates and fine tunes from 100s of possible design options. All in a few clicks, so engineers can push hardware to market faster and companies can benefit from the inventions being done by their R&D teams. We already have two paying customers in the OEM and system integrator spaces. We are venture backed and supported by a GBP 2.5MM grant by ARIA, the UK Government's invention agency.

For the first time in decades, fast, flexible domestic production can be economically superior. We’re rebuilding America’s productive edge through low-volume, high-mix manufacturing, helping hard-tech teams prototype faster, launch sooner, and build more here. If you want to restore American productive power and ship real hardware, reach out. jakob@foundation-industries.com

We build robots for physical AI. Meet Axol - A dual-arm robot designed for real-world tasks using AI.

GroundControl builds mission-critical software for manufacturers in highly-regulated industries (aerospace, defense, medical) Our core product automates lengthy, complex, and regulated quality documentation in aerospace manufacturing. As an example, the Boeing 777 is made up of over 3 million parts sourced from manufacturers around the world. These manufacturers must complete quality documentation for every part on this aircraft (machined parts, printed circuit boards, wire harnesses, assemblies, and more). GroundControl helps manufacturers complete this required documentation accurately, in minutes instead of days.

We capture and structure real factory workflows at scale by combining first-person industrial video with SOP-level process knowledge. This enables robotics and AI labs to train on real production data, not just controlled lab environments.

Inversion Semiconductor is developing the next-generation chip fabrication machine, to create the most powerful chips 15x faster. Our vision is to reshore advanced chip fabrication capabilities in the West. We're building a lithography machine. Lithography uses light to pattern circuit features on silicon. We're scaling transistors to their physical limits by shrinking particle accelerators 1000x, to create a high power light source. Using our light source we will double transistor density for a given numerical aperture and 3x throughput.

Optifye.ai does AI performance monitoring for factory workers We place cameras in factories and use vision AI to tell supervisors who's working and who's not in real time. The shop floor has historically been a black box. With Optifye, manufacturing companies can now accurately measure worker output and boost efficiency!

We are making reusable satellites for zero-g manufacturing & Hypersonic Technology Development. Our first orbital recovery mission is set to launch in Q4 2026.

We help companies get custom PCBs built without having to manage multiple vendors themselves. We review or create PCB designs, find the right manufacturer, coordinate production, inspect and test every board, handle any manufacturing issues, and deliver the finished boards directly to your office. Our goal is to reduce manufacturing errors, shorten iteration cycles, and get your boards to you as quickly as possible without compromising on quality.

Forge Automation runs software enabled factories that deliver custom metal parts in four days or less. Instead of mechanical engineers having to wait two to three weeks for their low volume CNC parts, they can simply upload a CAD model on our platform and we will ship it out in four days or less. We aim to give mechanical engineers the "Amazon experience" for custom metal parts.

Mobius is the safe spot market for electronic components like microcontrollers and capacitors. We help electronics manufacturers buy and sell chips quickly, safely & at market prices.

Loombotic is automating wire harness manufacturing.

At Tiny, we’re building a new kind of ERP system for factories where AI agents automate repetitive workflows. Made for the four million factories still primarily relying on Excel. LLMs now unlock their troves of siloed unstructured data. We see a massive opportunity to build a compound startup and, beyond that, tap into network effects to unlock just-in-time manufacturing across entire supply chains.

camfer is the AI CAD tool. Now, engineers can create parametric designs with natural language.

Autumn Labs delivers a developer-friendly platform for monitoring and managing modern manufacturing lines. Seamlessly integrating with robotic stations—automated test stations, robotic assembly cells, and industrial arms—it ensures full traceability, live data monitoring, and secure data transport. We prioritize streamlining factory operations, boosting production quality, and preventing supply chain disruptions, all while offering an effortless onboarding experience for engineers and manufacturers.

Vendra makes it faster and easier to get custom parts manufactured in America. Submit one RFQ and Vendra turns your technical requirements into custom manufactured parts - routing work through qualified US suppliers, gathering competitive quotes, and managing production through delivery. We're ITAR registered and manufacture parts for American aerospace and defense leaders. Customers include Anduril, Mach Industries, Relativity Space, Castelion, and Planet Labs. Submit an RFQ at www.vendra.io to get started today!

Diode automates circuit board design. We work with hardware companies to get them the PCBs they need, fast.

Distributors & Manufacturers use Soff to grow revenue through Soff's sales agents that process quotes, orders and handles all communication with customers, co-workers & suppliers.

Building out new LNG plants, HVAC systems, or semiconductor processes rely on hundreds of iterations of feasibility testing (through simulation or real-world lab tests) where different designs (combinations of equipment) and parameters are validated. The parameters are often locked in PDFs (datasheets, wiring diagrams, PFDs/P&IDs) which take thousands of hours to convert into CSVs / JSONs, and the simulators don't have an easy API to work with. Outerport bridges the gap by finding documents from PLMs, extracting structured data from drawings, building a knowledge graph over them, and building autonomous AI agents that can fully automate this R&D process by running simulations and performing design checks.

We help distributors and manufacturers turn catalog chaos into launch-ready products. Share vendor data, pull online specs and pricing, fuzzy match to your database, generate images, and output products in your exact schema.

No Logo is building the orchestration layer for creating viral consumer products. The manufacturing world is full of capable, underutilized overseas factories with the machines, tooling, and engineers to build winning products – but no way to connect them to the creators and brands with the ideas and distribution. As a result, bringing a new product to market has traditionally taken 6-12 months, tens of thousands of dollars, and a team of 20-30 people. No Logo collapses that. Using generative AI, we take a creator's product idea, visualize it, break it into core components and manufacturing processes, and match each step to the right factory in our network – turning an idea into a shippable product in just a few weeks.

Bucket Robotics builds deployable computer vision systems for manufacturing — without labeling, long pilots, or fragile rules. We turn CAD and sample data into production-ready vision models that run on existing cameras and edge hardware. No manual labeling. No cold-start problem. Models deploy in minutes and adapt as parts, defects, and lines change. Our roots are in self-driving cars (Argo AI, Uber ATG, Stack AV), where we learned how to ship perception systems that operators trust in messy, real-world environments. We’re applying that playbook to factories: robust sensing, fast iteration, and tooling engineers actually enjoy using. Manufacturers struggle with inspection because parts are too variable for rules-based vision and too expensive to inspect by hand. Legacy systems are rigid, hardware-locked, and slow to customize. We take the opposite approach: software-first vision that fits into existing automation and scales across SKUs, facilities, and workflows. American Manufacturing is in the middle of a $700B automation push — but quality is still a trust problem. Bucket Robotics is building the vision infrastructure that lets factories automate inspection with confidence.

Distro is the all-in-one AI-powered sales platform for counter staff and inside sales at industrial wholesale distributors (HVAC/R, plumbing, electrical, and more).

Vista designs, finances, installs, and manages energy storage and solar at commercial, industrial, and multifamily properties for $0 upfront, helping businesses save up to 30% on their energy bills. The founding team previously worked at SpaceX, Rocket Lab, NASA and Firefly.

Our mission is to empower every manufacturer, no matter their scale, to invent and build anything using intelligent robots. Today’s industrial robots are fast but "blind". They struggle with any task that isn't perfectly repetitive. We are building the eyes and brain (a proprietary vision system and AI model) that allow industrial robots to see, reason, and perform complex work with sub-millimeter accuracy and the adaptability of a human expert. We are witnessing the start of a new industrial revolution: an era of advanced manufacturing powered by AI and robotics. We aim to lead this shift by putting these tools into the hands of every manufacturer, ensuring the power to invent and build at scale isn’t a privilege of the few.

DraftAid is the world's first generative AI for CAD manufacturing drawings, akin to GitHub Copilot but for CAD. It drastically shortens drawing creation time, turning hours into seconds. Every product that is manufactured - from construction to aerospace, automotive, durable goods, and electronics—relies on drawings. Currently, engineers and designers painstakingly make these essential drawings manually. Draftaid streamlines this process saving teams millions in time and quality. The idea was born out of Abdullah's experience as a mechanical design team member, where he created thousands of drawings and longed for a more efficient process. Partnering with Tahsin, a neighbour with a PhD in AI, and Mohammed, a seasoned engineering VP with experience in construction software, they turned the dream into reality. Since their launch in August, DraftAid has engaged customers through targeted outreach and word-of-mouth, securing paid pilots with subsequent contracts valued at $150,000. Be a part of ushering in the new era of CAD designs!

Manufacturing procurement teams spend 70% of their day buried in supplier emails and spreadsheets. Mandel fixes that. We're an AI supply chain coordinator that reads every supplier email, extracts the data that matters - POs, quotes, delivery dates, pricing - and catches disruptions before they cost you.

Zelos Cloud is the data platform for mission-critical systems that enables teams to observe, control, and test systems from prototype to production. The platform connects across entire ecosystems, capturing data from many protocols, enabling remote command execution, and facilitating team collaboration through shared workspaces and real-time annotations. By integrating data collection, processing, and visualization into one seamless pipeline, Zelos Cloud eliminates complexity and breaks down silos between engineering, operations, and quality teams.

The future of mRNA therapeutics is hampered by manufacturing challenges and unless solved, its exciting potential may never be realised. Sensible enables the next generation of mRNA medicines by turning living cells into factories producing abundant, highly stable and non-immunogenic mRNA in a scalable and cost-effective way.