Forgepoint

Dryft, founded in 2024 by Anna-Julia (AJ) Storch and Leonie Freisinger and headquartered in San Francisco, builds an agentic operating system for manufacturing operations (Hugo AI). It combines context-aware AI agents with mathematical optimization to automate decisions such as inventory monitoring, supplier follow-up, safety-stock adjustment, production planning and supply-chain coordination that legacy ERP systems leave to manual work, a category it calls Enterprise Resource Automation, serving European and US industrial manufacturers.

Atira, founded in Munich, Germany in November 2024 by Florian Diegruber and August DuMont Schutte, builds an AI orchestration layer sitting between a manufacturer’s CRM and ERP systems to automate requirement extraction, bid/no-bid decisions and technical documentation generation for industrial sales engineering.

ShangHai Xushu Technology Co., Ltd., established in 2020, is one of the earliest companies in China to build an industrial intelligence design technology system. Based on its self-developed industrial world model and engineering data structure, it provides 3D design solutions and 2D engineering drawing intelligent generation under a cloud architecture. Its core product, 'ShanShe,' was upgraded to 'ZeiXing AI'—an AI-powered design and R&D agent platform for hardware engineering, serving industries such as automotive, aerospace, and 3C. The founder and CEO, Wu Yongrong, is a Ph.D. in advanced manufacturing from Tongji University.

Focuses on vertical industrial AI agents, targeting material-processing steps such as grinding and welding

Flow Engineering, founded in 2023 in London, UK, develops collaborative tools that help hardware teams manage and track requirements changes.

Bloom is a Detroit-based manufacturing marketplace founded in 2023 that connects hardware companies — drones, robotics, e-bikes and scooters — with US-based suppliers and contract manufacturers. Its core product is now a set of supply chain AI agents that help customers find suppliers, parts, and manufacturing and engineering services.