The Systems That Make or Break Manufacturing

This week: Scaling assembly manufacturing, 3D Print Injection Molds, Cheap Fast Chips in the USA, CFD with Modular Surrogates, Snapmaker U1, Robotaxi tires, Quantum Eigensolvers.

Aug 24, 2025

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Shop Talk

Capturing this week's zeitgeist

The transition from prototype manufacturing to scaled production is a chasm. Brad Barbin, of Carbon Manufacturing Systems, wrote a comprehensive thread on operational excellence. As companies grow, they must shift from optimizing for product performance to optimizing for manufacturing efficiency, implementing eight key systems: configurators for managing product variability, strategic purchasing policies that evolve with volume, versioned work instructions as living documentation, fixtures and jigs for quality assurance during parallel assembly, manufacturing engineering focused on time-saving modifications, simulation and planning using queue theory to identify true bottlenecks, and perhaps the most challenging: sales discipline that rejects custom requests to protect operational capacity. Barbin's insights reveal that successful scaling requires not just better processes, but a fundamental cultural shift toward systematic, data-driven operations that prioritize manufacturing efficiency over the "always say yes" mentality that often drives early-stage success.

Assembly Line

This week's Industry 5.0 breakthroughs and frontier technologies of the built world.

🖨️ How to 3D Print Injection Molds (In a Few Hours!)

In this video, we will take a deep dive into how to produce low-volume injection molds in a matter of hours using SLA 3D printing and Rigid 10K Resin.

Introduction to Desktop Injection Molding Using 3D Printed Molds (Episode 1/5) /YouTube/
RMIT University engineers develop 3D printed titanium material that is 'third cheaper' than existing alloys /TCT/
University of Wyoming Lab Pushes Boundaries of Soft Material 3D Printing /3DPI/
University of Waterloo Secures $10.9M to Launch HI-AM 2.0 Additive Manufacturing Initiative /3DPI/

🗣️🚜 Carbon Robotics on a New Era of Farming

Paul Mikesell, Founder and CEO of Carbon Robotics, shares how combining artificial intelligence and lasers is transforming modern agriculture. From identifying and eliminating billions of weeds without chemicals to boosting crop yields and reducing operational costs, AI-driven robots are helping farmers operate more efficiently and sustainably.

Lumas Polymers CEO Luke Rodgers on the strategic acquisition of Jabil engineered material assets /Spotify/
Sasol’s chemical leader details turnaround plans /C&EN/

💿 Why Texas Instruments Is Betting $60 Billion On Making Cheap Chips In The U.S.

Texas Instruments is building a $60 billion U.S. manufacturing megaproject where Apple vows to make "critical foundation semiconductors" for iPhones and other devices. CNBC went to Sherman, Texas, for an exclusive first look inside the newest fab of seven TI's building in Utah and Texas to provide U.S.-made chips to customers like Nvidia and Ford. TI shares have suffered amid tariff concerns, and it's lost analog market share for several years, but top leaders are confident about the huge spend.

Why Do Startups Still Wait Weeks for a Board? /Quilter/
Printegrated Circuits: fully functional 3D Printed digital devices with embedded PCBs /Oliver Child and YouTube/
US to take 10% equity stake in Intel, in Trump's latest corporate move /Reuters/ while SoftBank invests $2 Billion /Reuters/
EdgeCortix Completes Initial Close of Series B Financing, Driving Total Funding to Nearly $100 Million USD /Business Wire/

🥨 Inside The IRVINS Factory: How Singapore’s Favourite Salted Egg Snacks Are Made

From a seafood restaurant experiment to a global snack success, IRVINS has become one of Singapore’s most recognisable brands. Take a behind-the-scenes look at how their salted egg chips are made, and discover two other makers putting local flavours on the map.

Keychain Raises $30 Million Series B and Launches KeychainOS, an AI Operating System Set to Power the Future of CPG Manufacturing /PR Newswire/
The Better Meat Co (BMC) has closed a $31 million oversubscribed Series A round enabling it to increase production of its Rhiza mycoprotein to commercial scale and sell “at prices lower than US commodity ground beef within 2026.” /AgFunderNews/
Therm Closes $3.6M Series A to Lead $10B Super Pollutant Carbon Credit™ Market /Business Wire/ while investment in startups offering soil analytics services is slumping because there’s less demand for carbon data /BloombergNEF/

📐🧠 Accelerating CFD with Modular Surrogates: Insights from MeshGraphNets and UPT Architectures

✍️ Author: Viktor Rozsa

Modeling and Simulation (M&S) remains a cornerstone of high-fidelity aerospace design, yet trade-space studies routinely require millions of CFD evaluations, driving a need for surrogate models that balance accuracy and throughput. Surrogate models offer a path forward, yet most production tools rely on rigid grid or particle structures and aren’t packaged for seamless integration into everyday CAE workflows.

This work describes a modular surrogate-modeling framework built on Nvidia PhysicsNemo and other open-source frameworks. Our primary approach leverages MeshGraphNets (MGNs), a specialized graph-neural-network architecture that encodes arbitrary CFD/FEA meshes into latent vectors via an MLP-based encoder, propagates information through iterative message passing in a processor core, and decodes back to physical field predictions. MGNs naturally respect mesh connectivity, generalize across resolutions, and deliver orders-of-magnitude speedups over traditional solvers while retaining high accuracy.

New Product Introduction

Highlighting new and innovative facilities, processes, products, and services

A new model predicts how molecules will dissolve in different solvents

✍️ Author: Anne Trafton

Using machine learning, MIT chemical engineers have created a computational model that can predict how well any given molecule will dissolve in an organic solvent — a key step in the synthesis of nearly any pharmaceutical. This type of prediction could make it much easier to develop new ways to produce drugs and other useful molecules.

The researchers have made their model freely available, and many companies and labs have already started using it. The model could be particularly useful for identifying solvents that are less hazardous than some of the most commonly used industrial solvents, the researchers say.

🖨️ Snapmaker U1 Production & Lab Testing

Testing Snapmaker's long-awaited new 3D printer - and it's a seriously fast, affordable, multi-color, multi-material machine /TechRadar/
Snapmaker U1 Beta Test Pilots’ First Impressions & Prints /YouTube/

🛞 Continental Offers aContact Tires Specifically for Autonomous Vehicle Fleets and Robotaxis

Continental has rolled out an original equipment tire line for use on driverless vehicles. The aContact tire family combines specially developed tire technologies that meet the varying requirements and areas of application of autonomous vehicle fleets. The tires are well suited to robotaxis, shuttle vehicles, autonomous delivery services and, in the future, self-driving private cars. Continental’s aContact tires will soon be hitting public roads for the first time in US cities such as Las Vegas and San Francisco.

Siemens for Startups x Dirac – A renaissance for manufacturing powered by collaboration

Fil and Trevor from Dirac share their experience working with Siemens and how they benefited from partnering with an established industry leader. Together with Siemens, Dirac is revolutionizing manufacturing with the world’s first automated work instruction platform tailored for the industry.

Business Transactions

This week's top funding events, acquisitions, and partnerships across industrial value chains.

BDC Launches $200M Fund II to Power Canada’s Next Wave of Industrial Innovation /GlobeNewswire/

🇺🇸 FieldAI Announces Over $400M in Funds Raised to Advance Embodied AI at Scale

FieldAI, a leader in physical AI and robotic autonomy, announced that it has raised $405 million in two consecutive rounds. Investors include Bezos Expeditions, BHP Ventures, Canaan Partners, Emerson Collective, Intel Capital, Khosla Ventures, NVentures (NVIDIA's venture capital arm), Prysm, Temasek, and others. Previous investors include Gates Frontier and Samsung. The latest round was oversubscribed, following rapid customer adoption and multiple expansion contracts for FieldAI's general-purpose robotics intelligence, with successful testing and deployments across hundreds of complex real-world industrial environments.

At the core of FieldAI's platform are Field Foundation Models (FFMs): a new class of "physics-first" foundation models built specifically for embodied intelligence. Unlike conventional vision or language models retrofitted for robotics, FFMs are designed from the ground up to grapple with uncertainty, risk, and the physical constraints of the real world. This enables safe and reliable robot behaviors when managing scenarios that they have not been trained on, navigating dynamic, unstructured environments without prior maps, GPS, or predefined paths.

🇺🇸 Nuro Closes $203 Million Series E Financing to Advance Its AI-First Self-Driving Technology and Commercial Partnerships

Nuro, a leader in autonomous driving technology, announced the closing of a $203M Series E funding round at a $6B valuation. The round includes Uber, returning investor Baillie Gifford, and new investors Icehouse Ventures, Kindred Ventures, NVIDIA, and Pledge Ventures. The additional $97 million in funding follows the first tranche of $106 million announced in April 2025. Investors announced in April included accounts advised by T. Rowe Price Associates, Inc., Fidelity Management & Research Company, Tiger Global Management, Greylock Partners, and XN.

The funding marks a major milestone in Nuro’s journey to bring self-driving technology to all roads and all rides. The new capital will enable the scaling of Nuro’s AI-first autonomous technology and the growth of its commercial partnerships. Nuro offers its advanced Nuro Driver™ autonomous driving system to automotive manufacturers and mobility providers, offering a clear and cost-effective path to integrate the company’s proven technology into commercial fleets, ride-hailing services, and personal vehicles.

🇺🇸 Overhaul Secures $105 Million Series C to Drive Platform Innovation and Expansion

Overhaul, the global leader of in-transit supply chain risk management, has secured $105 million in Series C equity funding led by Springcoast Partners with participation from Edison Partners. In addition to the Series C financing, the company also closed on a new debt facility with MidCap Financial.

The investment also positions Overhaul to capitalize on consolidation opportunities in the supply chain technology sector, where the company expects to see continued market shifts as companies focus on profitability and growth fundamentals. The company's recent acquisition of FreightVerify, which adds item-level tracking and inventory intelligence to its platform, demonstrates this consolidation strategy in action.

🇰🇷 Qunova Closes $10M Series A Funding Round

Qunova Computing, a developer of software applications designed with the goal of bringing quantum advantage to the chemical, pharmaceutical and industrial engineering sectors, announced it has raised Series A funding in the amount of $10 million USD (13.5 billion Korean Won). Investors participating in the round include GS Ventures, Korea Development Bank, GU Equity Partners, Company K, Quantum Ventures Korea, JB Investment, CKD Venture Capital and Daesung Private Equity.

This funding reflects strong investor confidence in Qunova’s flagship product, its quantum algorithm known as ‘HiVQE’ (Handover Iteration Variational Quantum Eigensolver). The algorithm has demonstrated promising results using a range of quantum computing modalities, which positions the company well to deliver practical quantum advantage in the near-term. Chemistry, drug discovery and materials science are among the industries where Qunova’s algorithm is delivering added value today.

🇺🇸 CVector Raises $1.5 Million in Pre-Seed Round Led by Schematic Ventures to Launch the Data Backbone for Industrial AI

CVector Energy, the company building the data backbone for industrial AI, announced a $1.5 million pre-seed round led by Schematic Ventures. CVector is pioneering the infrastructure to unlock AI-native operations in factories and critical infrastructure—redefining how industrial systems sense, reason, and respond.

CVector's time-series AI platform fuses ultra-high-fidelity asset data with dynamic external signals—like energy prices, weather, and market conditions—giving operators a unified system to power real-time decisions. Legacy data stacks weren't designed for AI and rapidly changing market conditions. CVector is the essential first step toward an autonomous, AI-driven industrial future.