Ai Build, the Additive Manufacturing (AM, also known as 3D printing) software company, has raised a Series A round of $8.5 million led by IQ Capital, with participation from Nikon as a strategic investor alongside its existing investors including Superseed, ACT Venture Partners, Atlas Ventures (UK) and Seedcamp.

Established in 2015 by two architects, Daghan Cam and Michail Desyllas, Ai Build offers manufacturers a cloud based solution, designed to reduce costs, lead times and material waste in the additive manufacturing process which has historically suffered from being laborious and error-prone.

Ai Build partners with major manufacturing firms, including Boeing, to expand the use of additive manufacturing in large-scale industrial applications. These applications range from specialized tooling to end-use components in aerospace, automotive, and energy sectors. 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.

Daghan Cam, Co-founder and CEO at Ai Build: “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.”

Michail Desyllas, Co-founder and COO at 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.”

Mason Sinclair, Principal at IQ Capital: “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.”

Yuichi Shibazaki, Corporate Vice President and Officer in charge of Next Generation Project Division at Nikon: “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 revolutionize AM.”

Ai Build will use the funding to accelerate its product roadmap, allowing it to onboard more customers with higher levels of automation and AI capabilities. Investment will also enable the team to expand into North America by opening a subsidiary in the US, and to continue its expansion in Europe. The engineering teams of Ai Build and Nikon will collaborate to advance the state of the art in additive manufacturing by combining their experience in software and hardware technologies.