Arda Industries Inc., a startup that develops artificial intelligence software for factories, launched today with $232 million in funding.
Accel, Altimeter, Founders Fund and Khosla Ventures led the investment. They were joined by XYZ Venture Capital, 8VC, SVAngel and Felicis.
Arda is led by co-founder and Chief Executive Bob McGrew, the former Chief Research Officer of OpenAI Group PBC. He earlier headed Palantir Technologies Inc.’s engineering group. Co-founders Augustus Odena, Alex Mark and Jakob Frick also held technical roles at the software maker.
Designing a production line for a new device can take months of work. Arda offers an AI platform that speeds up the workflow. According to the company, users can upload a blueprint of the product they wish to make and have the software automatically plan a production line. Arda determines what robots should be used and how manufacturing quality can be monitored. Furthermore, the platform generates visual work instructions for factory employees.
Companies such as handset makers refresh their devices on a regular basis. Every product update requires the manufacturer to reconfigure its production line, which can cost millions of dollars. According to Arda, its platform can speed up that task as well.
The difficulty of reconfiguring production lines partly stems from the way that industrial robotics are programmed. Developers configure robots to automate manual work by writing scripts. Automating even a simple operation such as picking up an item requires a script to take into account the item’s shape, weight, position on the conveyor belt and numerous other parameters. Whenever one of those parameters changes, the script must be updated.
The task is made even more complicated by the fact that production line changes tend to cascade. If a manufacturer adds an extra part to a device in an early stage of the production workflow, all the subsequent stages have to be updated as well. That creates additional work for developers.
According to Arda, its platform enables customers to complete engineering tasks that usually take days in a few hours. The company’s installed base currently comprises manufacturers in the defense and data center electronics markets. In the former segment, Arda is helping Anduril Industries Inc. optimize its production lines. Data center suppliers are using Arda’s software to make electrical equipment such as transformers.
“Manufacturing leaders told me their products change constantly, and manufacturing engineering can’t keep pace,” McGrew said. “Their designs change at software speed, but their factories don’t. So, we built the technology platform that solves this problem.”
In the long term, the company plans to expand its focus to the consumer electronics market. Arda hopes to develop AI agents that can adapt a production line to a new device in a few days instead of the months the task currently requires.