Supersonic Fiber Placement
Shop Talk
Capturing this week's zeitgeist
Not like “way” wrong, but very technically/machinist nerdy, sort of wrong.
A pivotal moment in Apple’s supply chain management occurred during the iPhone 6 “bendgate” crisis, when the company needed to switch from 6061 to 7075 aluminum. When their contract manufacturers Catcher and Foxconn claimed the new material would double production time and require significant price increases, Apple took the unusual step of independently validating these claims. By testing identical tooling and processes on the same type of CNC machines used in production, Apple discovered their suppliers were attempting to inflate costs unnecessarily. This led Apple to establish a dedicated production validation lab that mirrors their Asian manufacturers’ equipment – distinct from their prototype shops’ high-end machines – enabling them to accurately benchmark manufacturing capabilities, validate processes, and make informed design and procurement decisions. The key lesson is that maintaining in-house production expertise and testing capabilities can be crucial for OEMs to prevent supplier opportunism and ensure fair pricing in contract manufacturing relationships.
Assembly Line
This week's most influential Industry 4.0 media.
Boom Supersonic XB-1 breaks sound barrier during test flight
Boom Supersonic’s XB-1 aircraft broke the sound barrier for the first time ever on Tuesday, ushering in a new era of supersonic flight. The jet exceeded Mach 1 after taking off from the Mojave Air and Space Port in California for its highly anticipated 12th test flight. That marked the first time the XB-1 demonstrator aircraft, soaring above 34,000 feet, has ever reached the staggering speed. Boom Supersonic chief test pilot Tristan “Geppetto” Brandonburg flew the jet.
The demonstrator aircraft “leverages state-of-the-art technologies to enable efficient supersonic flight including digitally-optimized aerodynamics, carbon fiber composites, advanced supersonic engine intakes, and an augmented reality vision system for takeoff and landing visibility,” the company said on its website.
How Airbus builds planes in Mobile, Alabama
Mattress recycling wakes up
As recyclers work to improve the efficiency with which they disassemble old mattresses and pass the components along to secondary markets, researchers are working to develop new and improved technologies for turning polyurethane mattress foam into new products using chemistry. The challenging thing about polyurethanes, is that they’re thermosets. Thermosets are highly cross-linked polymers that can’t be melted and remolded like polyethylene or the other thermoplastics that people are used to tossing in their recycling bins. To do almost anything other than chop it up and glue the bits together into padding, recyclers must alter polyurethane foam on a chemical level.
Mike O’Donnell, the Mattress Recycling Council’s chief operating officer, says the MRC program structure was inspired by paint recycling programs in the US as well as Ecomaison, an industry-funded organization formed to comply with furniture-recycling regulations in France.
Shadow Robot DEX-EE hand takes manipulation to next level
Google DeepMind requested the inclusion of a high number of sensors to prioritize data collection, so Shadow Robot set about designing a hand with, as Walk put it, “far more sensors than would be sensible in any other context.”
The goal was to create a robot hand with high dexterity, sensitivity, and robustness for real-world learning tasks, without replicating the appearance of a human hand. To best achieve these needs, the design relies on three robust fingers and a hand around 50% larger than that of a human hand.
The result is DEX-EE, a robotic hand replete with high-speed sensor networks that provide rich data including position, force, and inertial measurement. This is augmented with hundreds of channels of tactile sensing per finger, optimizing pressure sensitivity to a dizzying level of magnitude, almost akin to that of a human hand.
New Product Introduction
Highlighting new and innovative facilities, processes, products, and services
Ambi Robotics Introduces AmbiStack, an AI-Powered Robotic Stacking Solution for Warehouse Operations
Ambi Robotics, the leader in AI-powered robotic sorting and stacking solutions for warehouse operations, unveils AmbiStack, a robotic system designed to automate the complex process of stacking items onto pallets or into containers achieving maximum density. With the global warehouse automation market projected to surpass $55 billion by 2030, AmbiStack addresses a critical demand for efficiency and scalability in supply chain operations.
AmbiStack features advanced AI technology which allows the system to stack items without prior knowledge of size, position, or appearance. Powered by an AI vision system based on foundation models and built on knowledge from over 200k operational hours of high-fidelity focused data, AmbiStack analyzes, tracks, and picks each item while performing quality control checks. Its AI planning system, built on simulation-to-reality technology, eliminates the need for tedious real world data collection, allowing rapid deployment into production. AmbiStack uses reinforcement learning to reason about the most efficient stacking of unfamiliar items, adapting to real-world conditions on-the-fly to maximize pallet and container utilization.
SiMa.ai Begins Sampling of MLSoC Modalix, the Industry’s First Purpose Built Multi-modal and GenAI Edge Product Family
SiMa.ai, the software-centric, embedded edge machine learning system-on-chip (MLSoC) company announced immediate availability of the Modalix 50 TOPs device, and a new Early Access Program for MLSoC™ Modalix. Modalix is the industry’s first purpose-built platform that seamlessly integrates multi-modal applications using Transformers, LLMs, LMMs and GenAI at the edge along with traditional computer vision algorithms while delivering power efficiency and cost-effectiveness. Modalix extends the SiMa.ai lead by delivering industry leading performance per watt that is consistently more than 10X compared to alternatives.
Business Transactions
This week's top funding events, acquisitions, and partnerships across industrial value chains.
Helion Announces $425M Series F Investment to Scale Commercialized Fusion Power
Helion, a fusion energy company, announced a $425 million Series F investment round that will be used to scale commercialization efforts for the company’s groundbreaking fusion technology. The oversubscribed and upsized round had participation from new investors, including Lightspeed Venture Partners, SoftBank Vision Fund 2, and a major university endowment, and existing investors including Sam Altman, Mithril Capital, Capricorn Investment Group, Dustin Moskovitz through Good Ventures Foundation, and Nucor. This latest round of funding will bring the total invested in Helion to over $1 billion and values the company at $5.425 billion post-money.
Helion recently began operating its 7th generation prototype, Polaris, which is expected to demonstrate the first electricity produced from fusion. With its previous prototype, Trenta, Helion was the first private company to achieve a fuel temperature of 100 million degrees Celsius, which is generally considered the required operating temperature for a commercial fusion power plant.
UVeye Secures $191M in Funding to Meet Soaring Demand for AI-Powered Vehicle Inspection Systems
UVeye, the global leader in AI-driven vehicle inspection technology, announced $191 million of funding, bringing total capital raised to date to $380.5 million. This latest infusion, combining equity and debt, will fuel UVeye’s efforts to meet surging global demand for its innovative systems and solidify its position as the market leader in the industry as the company nears a million vehicles scanned every month. The round was led by Woven Capital with participation from UMC Capital and MyBerg along with existing investors W.R. Berkley, Menora Mivtachim, and More Investment House for $41M in equity financing; Trinity Capital structured the $150 million debt facility.
The new funding will drive UVeye’s global expansion, increase large-scale manufacturing capacity, and strengthen strategic partnerships. In 2025, the company plans to deploy hundreds of systems worldwide, enabling the scanning of millions of vehicles annually and spearheading innovation across the automotive industry. The $150 million debt facility, structured by Trinity Capital, includes an initial $100 million commitment with an option for an additional $50 million, specifically allocated to support the production of these advanced systems.
Motif Raises $46 Million from CapitalG and Redpoint to Revolutionize The AEC Software Industry
Motif, a startup founded in 2023 by design software luminaries Amar Hanspal and Brian Mathews, has secured $46 million in seed and Series A funding to develop a next-generation platform for buildings. The Series A was led by Alphabet’s independent growth fund, CapitalG, and the previously undisclosed Seed round was led by Redpoint Ventures. Pre-seed venture firm Baukunst participated in both rounds.
Amar Hanspal, former Co-CEO and CPO of Autodesk, and Brian Mathews, former VP of Platform Engineering at Autodesk, aim to modernize the $8 billion AEC software industry dominated by legacy 20th century technology. “This is a massive market, but it’s also massively complex and requires absolute precision. We’ve hired a team of experts in the fields of cloud computing, machine learning and BIM with meaningful experience at companies including Autodesk, OnShape, Twitter, Vimeo and Tesla,” said Brian Mathews, Motif co-founder and CTO. “Together we’re tackling some of the hardest– and most exciting–technical frontiers in software”
World’s First “Universal” Robotics Software Platform BOW Raises £4 Million Seed to Reduce Cost and Complexity of Programming Robots
BOW, the universal robotics software company, has announced closing a £4 million seed round. The round was led by Northern Gritstone, the investment business focused on science and technology businesses in the North of England, with co-investors Finance Yorkshire and Praetura Ventures as part of the Northern Powerhouse Investment Fund II. This news follows the appointment in November 2024 of Liz Upton, Co-Founder of Raspberry Pi (LSE:RPI), as Chair of BOW’s board.
The BOW platform – which stands for “Bettering our Worlds” – and the BOW robot-agnostic software development kit (SDK) solve this industry bottleneck, making it possible for the first time to program different robots using the operating system and programming language of choice.
Originally spun-out from the University of Sheffield in 2020, BOW is now working with Original Equipment Manufacturers, System Integrators and Software Development Houses who are using the platform and SDK to accelerate their robotics innovation and application development.