Adam, one 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 completely.
After producing over 10 million social media impressions with the launch of its text-to-3D mannequin app, the AI startup had its decide of buyers.
“We had been getting time period sheets over e mail with none conferences,” mentioned CEO Zach Dive (on the appropriate of the image).
Adam rapidly 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, in addition they agreed on Adam’s roadmap — going client first, after which to enterprise.
This required essentially the most alignment: Adam caught individuals’s consideration with a mainstream product, not an enterprise one. However Dive mentioned this selection is paying off, and paving the way in which for Adam’s upcoming copilot for professional-grade CAD workflows.
The startup had at all times deliberate to go B2B, however felt that the know-how wasn’t enterprise-ready but — which is why it initially centered on makers, not engineers. However AI fashions improved sooner than they anticipated, and Adam now plans to launch its copilot by the top of the 12 months, Dive mentioned.
Its preliminary software lets creators with out CAD abilities create 3D fashions from textual content prompts, however early suggestions confirmed that textual content wasn’t at all times one of the best ways to work together with 3D, Dive mentioned. “So for our copilot, we blended in several interplay paradigms; for instance, customers choosing totally different elements of the 3D object and conversing with it.”
It will give the startup a component of differentiation in comparison with different text-to-CAD merchandise, 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 significantly helped with hiring, which continues to be an ongoing effort, Dive mentioned. 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 appropriate context for reasoning in area.”
Capital and endorsements can each assist with this endeavor, and Adam now has its fair proportion of each, typically mixed. In addition to TQ and taking part funds 468 Capital, Pioneer, Script Capital, and Transpose Platform, Adam can 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 referred to as Adam “the v0 of CAD” (in a nod to Vercel’s V0, an AI-powered platform for net creation).
“It’s easier, sooner, and reaches a broader viewers,” he wrote on X.
Adam is already on its approach to reaching a broad viewers, with “tens of hundreds of particular person customers and a rising base of paying prospects” for its commonplace 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 mentioned.
This testing part is clearly needed: there’s fairly a leap from serving to amateurs print 3D Pikachus to supporting engineers of their day by day work. Dive mentioned the startup doesn’t intend to interchange them, however as a substitute streamlines time-consuming duties equivalent to making use of the identical change to a number of CAD information.
With an preliminary concentrate on mechanical engineering, the startup plans to assist these professional customers generate function‑wealthy parametric designs in in style CAD packages, starting with Onshape, which is understood for bringing CAD to the cloud and reshaping workflows. “The identical factor might be true with AI,” Dive predicted.
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