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Ex-OpenAI research chief's Arda valued at $1.5B

Bob McGrew, OpenAI's former chief research officer, has launched Arda, whose AI agent speeds up retooling of assembly lines. A $160 million Series A values it at $1.5 billion, bringing total funding to about $230 million.

By: Mikola Máté Patrik · · 2 min read

Accel announcement card: Factories That Keep Pace With Design, with the Arda Industries logo and founder Bob McGrew
Image: Accel · Press kit · Investor announcement social image (og:image) · Source

What Arda does

In McGrew's words it is "a user interface and an agent that does for manufacturing engineers what Claude or Cursor does for programmers" (CNBC). The agent works from a product's CAD files and design documents. It works out the assembly order, writes the instructions and lays out the stations (TNW). A design change can then reach the factory floor without stopping production.

First customer: Anduril

Arda runs inside Anduril's ArsenalOS manufacturing software. According to TNW, basic work instructions that took 10 hours now take 15 minutes, and complex engineering work of up to 30 hours takes about 2.5 hours. Accel says complex engineering workflows move more than 10x faster.

The money

  • Series A: $160 million at a $1.5 billion valuation, co-led by Altimeter, Accel and Khosla Ventures.
  • Earlier seed: $72 million, led by Accel and Founders Fund.
  • About $230 million in total: CNBC and Accel say $230 million, TNW says $232 million.

What comes next

Arda is starting with defense and the data center supply chain, meaning makers of transformers and electrical equipment, with consumer electronics after that. Robotics is next: it is prototyping agents that program robots to carry out its assembly plans. McGrew says programming conventional automation for one station takes three to six months and close to $1 million, while a new phone stays at full production for only about four months. The software runs on a mix of proprietary, open-source and frontier models.

Co-founders are Augustus Odena (formerly Adept) and Alex Mark and Jakob Frick, both from Palantir. The coding-agent pattern of turning a design into executable steps is now reaching the factory. The valuation is steep, as the round's lead investor admits. The question is whether the numbers hold beyond Anduril.

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