Arda told CNBC it raised $230 million at a $1.5 billion valuation as the startup develops AI software that former OpenAI research chief Bob McGrew says helps engineers build assembly lines faster.
CNBC reported Tuesday that Altimeter Capital, Accel and Khosla Ventures led the financing, with Altimeter’s Apoorv Agrawal leading the investment. McGrew spent more than a decade leading product and engineering at Palantir before joining OpenAI. He left OpenAI in 2024 after working on its reasoning models. The founding team also includes Augustus Odena, who helped start Adept, and Alex Mark and Jakob Frick, both former Palantir engineers.
Arda’s pitch centers on the time it takes to adapt factory equipment after a product design changes. McGrew put the time needed to retrain a worker at one day, versus three to six months to alter automated production. He said the gap creates demand for tools that help manufacturing engineers build assembly lines more quickly.
McGrew said Arda has deployed its AI models with Anduril, a military technology company. The software uses Arda’s own models alongside open-source and frontier models, he told CNBC. He described it as an assistant for manufacturing engineers, similar to AI tools that help programmers write code.
McGrew said frequent design changes steer production toward East Asia, where manufacturers can retrain large workforces while automated factories take longer to adjust. He argued that more adaptable automation could support U.S. manufacturing and jobs. He connected that possibility to the Trump administration’s effort to bring production back to the United States.
Agrawal estimated manufacturing worldwide at $16 trillion, including $3 trillion in the United States. He described Arda’s current price as steep but argued that the industry’s size presented a substantial long-term opportunity. He said he expects Arda to capture a significant share of that market.
McGrew identified robotics as Arda’s next planned product area.
