Arda, a startup quietly built by former OpenAI executive Caleb McGrew, has raised $1.5 billion to apply AI to U.S. manufacturing. The company, which McGrew discussed publicly for the first time this week, uses a mix of its own models, open-source models, and frontier models to run software designed for factories. McGrew's co-founders include Augustus Odena, who helped start Adept and previously worked at Google and Meta, as well as former Palantir engineers Alex Mark and Jakob Frick.
Altimeter's Apoorv Agrawal led the funding round, having met McGrew during their time at Palantir. Agrawal noted that manufacturing is a $16 trillion global industry, with $3 trillion in the U.S. alone, and argued that Arda's long-term opportunity justifies its steep valuation. McGrew said robotics is next on the roadmap, and that automating factories could help bring more production—and jobs—back to the U.S., especially as the Trump administration pushes onshoring. He pointed out that no one has ever successfully assembled a smartphone in the U.S., and that doing so would create jobs rather than take them away.