Japanese artificial intelligence startup CADDi Inc. today raised $38 million in new funding to grow its AI data platform that assists manufacturing companies optimize the procurement of parts.

Atomico, a European venture capital firm, led what the company called a “Series C Extension” alongside existing investors Global Brain and Minerva Growth. The new funding brings the total raised by the company to around $202 million, including its $89 million Series C round in 2023.

Founded in 2017, CADDi develops AI-enabled software that scans technical drawings — such as blueprints, PDFs and specification sheets — and connects to company supply chains to understand the parts that manufacturing companies use. In many cases, this data exists as unstructured information that is difficult to track that is scattered throughout different parts of the manufacturing process and as a result, creates supply and value inefficiencies.

CADDi’s AI extracts the knowledge of the manufacturing and business processes and makes it searchable, identifying even duplicate parts across different drawings and spec sheets. It then links purchase data with drawings and processes to assist with supplier selection and negotiation to handle value analysis.

“We have seen tremendous demand from global companies for our software platform due to the tangible, immediate ROI we can provide them with, turbocharging their AI-driven operational transformations,” said CADDi co-founder and Chief Executive Yushiro Kato.

Kato went on to comment that recent geopolitical strife, such as tariffs, has further complicated supply chain management for manufacturing companies. “Our AI platform is well positioned to help companies across the world navigate these challenges,” he added.

In one particular use case, CADDi can assist with optimizing pricing through similarity search using historical technical drawings to find pricing inconsistencies. For an average customer, a single project can involve over 10,000 individual drawings. Similarity search can save time for employees glancing through documents, which in turn saves money by giving the company a better value by discovering alternative suppliers at a part level.

The global manufacturing market represents a massive economic force employing over 210 individuals worldwide and has a projected market global value of $14.6 trillion for the current year, according to market analysis website Statista.

Current manufacturing supply processes are antiquated, CADDi argued, and increasingly businesses are looking for ways to deal with ways to deal with inbound pressures to handle challenges with cost and efficiency. To tackle these issues, manufacturers are turning to AI, but most of their data is stored in unstructured documents and broken up across different processes making it difficult to ingest into existing AI models.

By creating a solution that keeps the unique needs of the manufacturing industry in mind and that is built to support software and procedures that are often 30 to 40 years out of date, CADDi said that it is providing big businesses a transformative path forward.

Since its launch, CADDi has grown its AI platform to over 100 customers including numerous large manufacturing companies such as Japanese multinational conglomerate Hitachi Ltd., motorcycle maker Kawasaki Heavy Industries Ltd., automobile manufacturer Subaru Corp. and semiconductor producer Tokyo Electron Ltd.

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