• Inkbit

  Participated · Series B · Jul 2021

  Led by CEO Davide Marini and based in Medford, MA, Inkbit develops a multi-material additive manufacturing system designed for volume production of complex polymer 3D printed parts. Its Vision-Controlled Jetting (VCJ) technology combines advances in computation, chemistry and process control to scale from prototyping to production on the same platform. The system targets rapid manufacturing of innovative products such as complex industrial fluidics and bio-inspired robots. Inkbit says its platform accelerates the translation of ideas into products and enables multi-material manufacturing across development and production. The company intends to use newly raised funds to expand operations and advance development efforts. No operating metrics (revenue/users) were disclosed in the article. Inkbit develops vision-guided, closed-loop 3D printers that use imaging and AI to detect and correct printing errors on the fly. The company’s Vista printer, released in February, builds on its Vision-Controlled Jetting (VCJ) closed-loop feedback technology. Inkbit holds exclusive licensing rights to technology developed with financial support from DARPA. Founded in 2017, the firm says it is experiencing significant growth and plans to scale its team to meet customer demand. The latest funding will be used to expand sales reach in the U.S. and into additional markets including Asia and Europe/Middle East/Africa. Total funding now stands at $45 million after the current round. Inkbit developed the first 3D printer driven by vision-based feedback control and artificial intelligence, using contactless material jetting to print multi-material parts with production-grade materials. The platform adds machine vision and machine learning to material jetting to increase accuracy, reliability and automated quality assurance for every printed part. The company aims to industrialize its system for multi-material and volume manufacturing, expand its materials set for medical, life sciences and robotics applications, and install first units for customers. Inkbit has run an early access program with customers such as Johnson & Johnson and plans to release first systems in 2021 to select customers. The company was spun out of MIT CSAIL in 2017 and is based in Medford, Massachusetts. Prior and public funders include DARPA, the National Science Foundation and MassVentures.

• Neurala

  Participated · Equity · Jun 2021

  Neurala offers VIA, a vision-AI software platform built on its Lifelong-DNN (L-DNN) technology to reduce the time, cost and skills required to build and maintain production-quality custom computer-vision solutions. The product is positioned for in-line quality inspection, enabling faster, more accurate and scalable defect detection on manufacturing production lines. Over the last year the company expanded work with system integrators threefold and broadened engagements with OEMs to increase deployment capacity. Neurala launched a European subsidiary in Trieste, Italy to support its growing international footprint while remaining headquartered in Boston, MA. The company says the new capital will be used to evolve VIA for a wider range of applications and accelerate global adoption as manufacturers prioritize automation and Industry 4.0 initiatives. Total invested in Neurala now stands at $26 million. Neurala builds vision AI software focused on industrial and real-world applications, emphasizing edge deployment. Its Lifelong-DNN (L-DNN) technology lowers data requirements and enables continuous learning in the cloud or at the edge. The company helps industrial customers improve quality inspection and monitoring, with deployments across manufacturing, drones, robotics, and smart devices. Neurala’s edge-trained models are designed to extract actionable insights from IIoT sensor and camera data and to be set up by operators without specialized expertise. The company positions its technology as a core enabler of Industry 4.0 initiatives through on-machine, edge AI. Neurala builds the Neurala Brain SDK (marketed as Brains for Bots) to run machine learning locally on resource-constrained devices, enabling incremental learning and on-device updates without continuous network connectivity. The platform is hardware-agnostic, scales from low-end CPUs to high-end GPUs, and integrates with frameworks such as TensorFlow; the SDK supports Linux, Android and iOS. For customers needing custom models, Neurala offers a data ingestion and training service, and it also provides a server-based solution, yielding three complementary business models. The company targets time-sensitive and offline use cases (for example, drones inspecting power lines) and aims to put AI in the hands of toy makers, drone builders and IoT engineers. Early customers include Teal Drones, and Motorola Solutions is noted as an early customer; the founding team and leadership (CEO Massimiliano Versace) have cognitive and neural systems Ph.D.s from Boston University. The article does not disclose revenue or other operating metrics. Neurala builds deep-learning software that enables robots to learn and be instructed by people rather than be explicitly programmed. Its core technology applies artificial neural networks (ANNs) running on GPUs, and the company holds a fundamental patent for that approach. Led by CEO and co-founder Massamiliano Versace, Neurala has secured contracts with NASA and the U.S. Air Force Research Labs to develop deep learning controllers. Use cases cited include autonomous exploration of Mars-like environments, collision avoidance for unmanned aircraft, and persistent surveillance. The company will use the recently raised seed funds to develop practical commercial applications for both flying and ground-based robots that utilize its learning software. Neurala is based in Boston, MA.

No current team members are available.