“Engineering general intelligence” platform startup Foundation EGI revealed today that it has raised $23 million in new funding to accelerate its vision of turning manufacturing’s biggest bottlenecks into breakthroughs using domain-specific artificial intelligence.

Foundation EGI became a standalone company in 2023 when it was spun off from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, with what it claims is the world’s first EGI platform, a domain-specific AI system tailored to engineers.

EGI combines purpose-built large language models with physics-based context and engineering best practices to tackle the complex nature of engineering, from design to manufacturing to documentation. The platform transforms disorganized specifications, siloed “tribal knowledge” and outdated instructions into succinct, structured, auditable and human- and machine-executable workflows.

“We’re not just using AI to automate tasks, we’re building AI that knows when to break the rules,” said Wojciech Matusik, Ph.D., co-founder and chief science officer of Foundation EGI and professor of electrical engineering and computer science in mechanical engineering at MIT. “The biggest leaps in engineering haven’t come from following best practices. They came from challenging assumptions. Foundation EGI is designed to do exactly that.”

Foundation EGI was born from MIT’s cross-disciplinary research in AI for design and manufacturing, led by co-founders Matusik and Michael Foshey. Their paper, “Large Language Models for Design and Manufacturing,” was published in 2024 and is claimed to have influenced a new wave of intelligent engineering tools.

The company was founded to commercialize and power real-world AI applications for all manufacturing domains, including automotive, heavy industry, appliances, power tools and advanced manufacturing.

Translink Capital led the Series A round, with RRE Ventures, McRock Capital, Escape Investment Management, Fifth Growth Fund and previous investors E14 Fund, UNION Venture Capital, GRIDS Capital and Henry Ford III also participating.

“We backed Foundation EGI because this is one of the rare teams that combines deep technical mastery in AI with firsthand knowledge of how design and manufacturing actually work,” said Toshi Otani, co-founder and managing director of Translink Capital. “In addition, we believe that there is a great market opportunity that exists in Japan, Korea and Taiwan where we have a strong track record of supporting our portfolio companies.”

The new round takes the total raised by Foundational EGI to more than $30 million, with the company having previously raised a seed round of $7.6 million in April.

Image: Foundation EGI