Adam, some of the viral startups in Y Combinator’s Winter 2025 batch, has raised a $4.1 million seed spherical to energy its subsequent steps, TechCrunch realized solely.
After producing over 10 million social media impressions with the launch of its text-to-3D mannequin app, the AI startup had its choose of buyers.
“We had been getting time period sheets over e-mail with none conferences,” stated CEO Zach Dive (on the best of the image).
Adam shortly went with TQ Ventures as its lead investor as a result of they agreed on the way forward for computer-aided design (CAD). Simply as importantly, additionally they agreed on Adam’s roadmap — going client first, after which to enterprise.
This required probably the most alignment: Adam caught folks’s consideration with a mainstream product, not an enterprise one. However Dive stated this alternative is paying off, and paving the way in which for Adam’s upcoming copilot for professional-grade CAD workflows.
The startup had all the time deliberate to go B2B, however felt that the expertise wasn’t enterprise-ready but — which is why it initially centered on makers, not engineers. However AI fashions improved quicker than they anticipated, and Adam now plans to launch its copilot by the tip of the yr, Dive stated.
Its preliminary instrument lets creators with out CAD abilities create 3D fashions from textual content prompts, however early suggestions confirmed that textual content wasn’t all the time one of the simplest ways to work together with 3D, Dive stated. “So for our copilot, we blended in numerous interplay paradigms; for instance, customers deciding on totally different components of the 3D object and conversing with it.”
This can give the startup a component of differentiation in comparison with other text-to-CAD products, though there’s already competitors within the ‘AI copilot for CAD’ section as effectively. MecAgent, for example, is already out there, however Adam might capitalize on its viral launch.
Early momentum notably helped with hiring, which remains to be an ongoing effort, Dive stated. He and his cofounder, Adam CPO Aaron Li, each graduated from UC Berkeley’s Grasp of Design program, however the startup additionally wants extra AI and engineering expertise to “give fashions the best context for reasoning in area.”
Capital and endorsements can each assist with this endeavor, and Adam now has its justifiable share of each, generally mixed. In addition to TQ and taking part funds 468 Capital, Pioneer, Script Capital, and Transpose Platform, Adam can also be backed by angel buyers, together with Tim Glaser (Posthog), Trevor Blackwell (YC), and Theo Browne (T3 Chat).
As well as, Vercel founder Guillermo Rauch known as Adam “the v0 of CAD” (in a nod to Vercel’s V0, an AI-powered platform for internet creation).
“It’s less complicated, quicker, and reaches a broader viewers,” he wrote on X.
Adam is already on its approach to reaching a broad viewers, with “tens of 1000’s of particular person customers and a rising base of paying clients” for its normal and professional plans, which respectively begin at $5.99 and $17.99 per thirty days. The startup hasn’t begun to monetize its soon-to-launch enterprise providing, however has “testers validating totally different options,” Dive stated.
This testing part is clearly obligatory: there’s fairly a leap from serving to amateurs print 3D Pikachus to supporting engineers of their each day work. Dive stated the startup doesn’t intend to exchange them, however as an alternative streamlines time-consuming duties akin to making use of the identical change to a number of CAD recordsdata.
With an preliminary concentrate on mechanical engineering, the startup plans to assist these professional customers generate characteristic‑wealthy parametric designs in common CAD applications, starting with Onshape, which is understood for bringing CAD to the cloud and reshaping workflows. “The identical factor shall be true with AI,” Dive predicted.
