CloudNC raises $20M Series B extension to scale AI-assisted CNC machining

CloudNC, a UK-based manufacturing software company, has raised $20 million as an extension of its Series B round, bringing its lifetime funding to $128 million. According to TechCrunch, which reported the news, this is the company's first major raise in four years.

The startup was founded in 2015 by Theo Saville, now CEO, and Chris Emery, now chief science officer. Its target is one of the more labor-intensive corners of manufacturing: programming CNC (Computer Numerical Control) machines, which carve and shape materials into the precision parts used in automotive, defense and consumer hardware products.

What CAM Assist does

Before a CNC machine can cut a part, a machinist or CAM programmer has to decide how the part will be held in place, which tools to use, and how the material should be removed step by step. Traditional CAM software helps with this, but as Saville explained to TechCrunch, those systems still mostly require programmers to specify the machining plan manually.

CloudNC's flagship product, CAM Assist, plugs into existing CAM packages such as Autodesk Fusion and Mastercam and generates that plan automatically. It picks suitable tools, approach directions, and cutting feeds and speeds, then drafts the code that tells the CNC machine what to do. A human programmer then reviews, edits and approves the output — the goal, Saville said, is to make skilled workers more productive rather than to remove expert judgment from the process.

More than 1,000 machine shops worldwide now use CAM Assist, and roughly 80% of CloudNC's customers are in the United States. The company employs 80 people, and Saville said scaling adoption is now its biggest priority.

Who invested

Nimble Ventures led the extension, with participation from Calculus Venture Capital, Entrepreneur First, and LM Capital, Lockheed Martin's venture arm. Saville told TechCrunch the funding will support wider uptake of CAM Assist, strengthen go-to-market operations, expand into existing and new markets, and fund new products.

Quote Agent is next

The most prominent of those new products is Quote Agent, which is scheduled to launch next month. Where CAM Assist accelerates programming, Quote Agent targets the estimating problem that comes before it: helping shops assess the likely cost and risk of a prospective job so they can decide quickly whether to accept or turn down new work.

Saville tied the product to broader conditions in U.S. manufacturing, where machine shops are looking to reshore production while facing a shortage of skilled workers. As he put it to TechCrunch, shops need to quote faster, program faster, and deliver more with the people and machines they already have.

He also emphasized the scale of the underlying technical problem, noting that the number of possible ways to machine a typical CNC part exceeds the number of atoms in the universe. CloudNC has spent years attacking that combinatorial challenge with its own factory and its own software team, learning from real machining work along the way.

Why it matters

CNC programming is a genuine bottleneck in manufacturing: it demands scarce, experienced machinists, and every hour spent planning a job is an hour not spent cutting parts. CloudNC's approach — an AI assistant layered on top of the CAM tools shops already use, with a human reviewing the result — is a template for how applied AI is moving from text and code into physical industry workflows.

The timing matters too. Reshoring pressure in the U.S. is pushing shops to take on more work with fewer qualified workers, which is exactly the gap CloudNC is selling into. The participation of Lockheed Martin's venture arm also signals defense-sector interest in faster, more automated machining capacity. If CAM Assist and Quote Agent can demonstrably compress quoting and programming time, the company's bet is that adoption becomes a capacity issue rather than a persuasion one.