What if generating a usable 3D design was as easy as inviting ChatGPT? It is the mission of Backtrackinga startup founded by 3D printing veterans that just raised $30 million from Andreessen Horowitz, New Enterprise Associates and a host of other big names in tech.
Designing physical objects often 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 transform that in minutes with Backflip's new foundational models.
“AI language models capture the way we think, vision models capture the way we see, and Backflip creates base models that capture the way we build,” Benhaim said.
Backflip says its models are trained on a massive dataset of around 10 million 3D parts, generated in part using AI, which took two years to build. With this increase, Backflip plans to launch its app and democratize the design process for everyone from manufacturers to individuals, Mark told TechCrunch. AI isn't just limited to text, either: it can also produce designs based on sketches, photos, or other materials.
“Now everyone can do it. You can literally send text prompts, draw a sketch, insert a picture, or take a photo with your iPhone, then print it. Your ideas are in the world. A little crazy,” he said.
A logical concern in the radical democratization of design is the kinds of products that some people end up building. The assassin of the CEO of United Healthcare used a 3D printed gunFor example. Mark told TechCrunch that Backflip takes security seriously and currently has two tiers of content safety checkers to filter potentially dangerous designs generated.
The Backflip round was co-led by NEA and a16z with participation from angel investors including Microsoft CTO Kevin Scott, Android founder Rich Miner and Ashish Vaswani, co-author of the paper “Attention Is All You Need” which helped launch the LLM. revolution.
Backflip has been in stealth since its inception in December 2022, raising a funding round whose details are not disclosed. This large Series A is part of a broader trend of venture capital enthusiasm for improving (or even replacing) labor-intensive processes with AI, everywhere from coding to right. The VCs are in a bidding war on Anysphere thanks to its AI-powered code editorSlider, TechCrunch reported.
For NEA partner Lila Tretikov, Backflip is also part of a thesis around financing startups focused on the construction and generation of 3D worlds and products, another trend reviewed by TechCrunch. Tretikov led the NEA's investment in World Labs, the startup created by AI pioneer Fei-Fei Li that wants to generate interactive 3D scenes from a single photo.
“AI, in combination with many other techniques, would be phenomenal in helping engineers and designers build things that we can't even imagine right now,” she told TechCrunch.
Markforged, the previous company founded by Backflip executives, sells 3D printing systems, including physical 3D printers. He became public in a $2.1 billion SPAC in July 2021 after breeding $137 million in capital, according to its website. Mark and Benhaim left less than a year after the SPAC. (Markforged shares have fallen nearly 97% since listing, like many SPACs.)
Mark said that while he was “incredibly proud” of Markforged, building hardware is “much slower” than focusing solely on design software, as Backflip does. “The real problem with 3D printing, and just moving humanity into the future as a whole, is the design aspect,” Mark said. “I want to see the future, don’t I?” I want to fly among the stars. And we don't achieve that with traditional design packages.
#Backed #a16z #NEA #Backflip #raises #30M #Series #turn #text #AIgenerated #designs