The Pulse
CADDi Raises $114 Million at a $1.2 Billion Valuation
Manufacturing AI company CADDi has raised $114 million in a Series D round that values the Tokyo- and Chicago-based startup at $1.2 billion. The company plans to expand its manufacturing data platform, develop models for CAD files and drawi
AI.info Team ·
CADDi has raised $114 million in a Series D funding round that values the manufacturing software company at $1.2 billion, more than doubling its valuation since March 2025.
The Tokyo- and Chicago-based startup said eight new and existing investors joined the round. Participants include Moore Strategic Ventures, Coreline Ventures, Toyota’s growth-stage fund Woven Capital, and HR Tech Fund, the corporate venture arm of Japan’s Recruit Holdings. Existing backers Atomico, Globis Capital Partners, and the JPS Growth funds, managed by a Japan Post Bank subsidiary, also invested; one new investor was not identified.
The financing brings CADDi’s total funding to $234 million, according to the company. CADDi’s previous reported valuation was $470 million after a $38 million investment from Atomico in March 2025.
From CAD drawings to an AI data platform
CADDi was founded in 2017 with a product called CADDi Drawer, which helped manufacturers search technical drawings and identify similar or identical parts already purchased or held in inventory. The software also surfaced defect-rate information, allowing customers to compare existing stock, established suppliers, and alternative vendors.
Over the past two years, CADDi has expanded that product into what it calls an AI data platform for manufacturing. CADDi Drawer is now called CADDi Explorer. The broader platform connects data from systems including computer-aided design files, enterprise resource planning software, and human-resources systems, then organizes that information for employees and software agents.
CADDi Agent helps manufacturers assess part standardization and evaluate how design changes could affect performance and safety. The company has also introduced six workflow products, including CADDi Design Review, which checks new drawings and CAD models for potential errors by comparing them with problems found in earlier work.
“I’ve never seen anybody who uses LLMs to do design reviews because it doesn’t understand drawings or CAD,”
Yushiro Kato, cofounder and CEO, CADDi
Kato told Fortune that CADDi uses a proprietary AI model for product data such as drawings and CAD files, while applying general-purpose large language models to documents and spreadsheets.
Funding targets North America and manufacturing-specific models
CADDi plans to use the new capital to expand its product lineup, build models that can interpret manufacturing data such as three-dimensional CAD files and two-dimensional drawings, hire employees, and expand internationally with a focus on North America.
Kato declined to disclose revenue or customer figures, but said sales are more than doubling year over year. CADDi has customers in 22 countries, and more than half of Japan’s 100 largest manufacturers use the company’s software, he said. The company has about 900 employees, up from 600 in early 2025.
CADDi’s commercial pitch centers on measurable operational results, including lower direct-material costs and shorter engineering lead times. The company employs more than 100 customer-success staff, a group larger than its sales team, because Kato identifies organizational change as the main barrier to adoption. CADDi has also begun hiring forward-deployed engineers to work directly with customers.
CADDi’s four-year automotive problem
Kato describes the company’s broader objective as addressing what he calls the “physical bottleneck”: the gap between the speed of software development and the time required to design, test, manufacture, and deliver physical products.
Developing a new car still takes about four years from planning to delivery, Kato said. Automakers typically conduct about 20 design-review cycles for a single product because some problems emerge only after prototypes are built. CADDi wants to help companies run more reviews in parallel and identify failures earlier by organizing the knowledge held by experienced engineers.
CADDi has set a goal of accelerating physical innovation tenfold by 2035. For a vehicle, that would mean reducing the planning-to-delivery cycle to roughly four or five months. The new funding gives the company capital to pursue that target through manufacturing-specific models, software products, and a larger presence in the United States.
The immediate test is less abstract: whether CADDi can turn engineering drawings, supplier records, production data, and unwritten shop-floor knowledge into software that manufacturers will use every day.