What if creating a usable 3D design was as easy as prompting ChatGPT? That's the mission Flip backAndreessen Horowitz; A startup founded by 3D printing veterans with $30 million from New Enterprise Associates and several other big names in tech.
Designing physical objects requires hours or days of specialized work using computer-aided design software. Backflip CEO Greg Mark and CTO David Benhaim, both founders of 3D printing company Markforged, want to change that in minutes thanks to Backflip's new basic models.
“AI language models capture how we think, vision models capture how we see, and Backflip is creating foundational models that capture how we build,” said Benhaim.
Backflip said it trained on a massive data set of about 10 million 3D parts, generated in part by AI that took two years to build. With this boost, Backflip plans to launch its app and democratize the design process for anyone from makers to regular people, Mark told TechCrunch. AI is not limited to text: it can also include diagrams, Designs can be produced based on photographs or other materials.
“Now anyone can do it. You can send text alerts; or you can draw a sketch; Or you can drag a picture; Or you can snap a photo with your iPhone — then print it. Your ideas are in the world. It's crazy,” he said.
A logical concern with democratic design is the kind of product some people end up building. Murderer of United Healthcare CEO A 3D-printed gun was used.For example. Mark told TechCrunch that Backflip takes safety seriously and currently has two-level content safety checks to filter out potentially harmful designs.
Backflip's round was co-led by NEA and a16z, with Microsoft CTO Kevin Scott; Led by angel investors including Android founder Rich Miner and Ashish Vaswani, co-author of the “Attention Is All You Need” paper. Revolution.
Backflip has been stealthy since its inception in December 2022, raising a seed round of undisclosed details. This massive Series A is a broad line of enthusiasm for improving (or even replacing) highly labor-intensive processes with AI, everywhere from coding to law. VCs are in one group Anysphere bids war thanks to its AI-powered code editing.Cursor, TechCrunch reports.
For NEA partner Lila Tretikov; Backflip is also part of a portfolio of funded startups focused on building and manufacturing 3D worlds and products. Trend checked by TechCrunch. Tretikov led the NEA's investment in World Labs, created by Fei-Fei Li, an AI pioneer who wanted to create interactive 3D scenes. From a single photo.
“AI is amazing at combining with so many other technologies to create things that engineers and designers can't even imagine right now,” she told TechCrunch.
Markforged, the previous company founded by Backflip's executives, sells 3D printers, including physical 3D printers. That's it went public. $2.1 billion SPAC by July 2021 Cultivating. Its website has a net worth of $137 million. Both Mark and Benhaim left within a year of the SPAC. (Markforged's stock, like many SPACs, has fallen nearly 97% since its listing.)
Markforged says that while he's very proud of Markforged, building hardware is slower than focusing on designing software like Backflip is doing. “With 3D printing and just moving humans so far into the future, the real problem is the design side,” Mark said. “I want to see the future, right? I want to fly among the stars, and it doesn't come from traditional design packages.”