Bright Machines closed a $179 million funding round. The company aims to automate manufacturing ro make manufacturing hardware as simple as building software.Bright Machines was founded six months ago in part by former Autodesk interim CEO Amar Hanspal.
Bright Machines operates on the belief that low-cost manufacturing in developing nations has reached its limits as more economies enter the middle class and factories encounter challenges hiring employees at the lower pay rates that have been common in the past. This shift coincides with advances in deep learning and robotics.
“Our long-term goal is to demystify and democratize manufacturing. We want to make making physical things as easy as it is to make digital things,” Hanspal told VentureBeat in a phone interview. “We believe manufacturing is ready for its next big shift, which is to really bring software to the factory floor and drive machines using software rather than labor.”