Dulo Inc. has secured $130 million in funding to develop foundation models for hardware design tasks that aim to accelerate manufacturing. The round was co-founded by Sebastian Thrun and Adrian Aoun, who previously sold his NLP startup Wavii to Google for over $30 million. Investors in the round include Eric Schmidt, Ram Shriram, Marc Benioff, and John Doerr.
The company’s website states that Dulo aims to facilitate ‘manufacturing at lightspeed’ by applying AI to hardware. Aoun and Thrun are leveraging their experience to build systems that could transform how physical products are designed and produced. The funding round brings in significant support from prominent figures in technology and venture capital.
This investment highlights growing interest in applying artificial intelligence to physical manufacturing processes. Competitor Prometheus Inc., founded by Jeff Bezos, raised $12 billion earlier 2026, showing the scale of capital available in this sector. Builders and manufacturers should watch how these specialized models integrate into existing workflows to reduce design cycles and production times.
