Squint Raises $40M to Revolutionize Manufacturing with AI and AR

Exclusive: Squint raises $40 million at $265 million valuation to modernize manufacturing for companies like Pepsi and Michelin

And as AI has become the axis on which all technology turns, it makes sense AI would make its way into factories of all kinds -- but startups focused on AI in industrial applications are still rarer than you may think, said Devin Bhushan, founder and CEO of Squint. "For whatever reason, it can still feel like a forgotten industry by a lot of the tech world," said Bhushan. "Even today, it can be hard to, say, get together for an industrial founders dinner. There's not a group I can meet up with. There's not that many people [in Silicon Valley] serving it. When we look at our competitors, our biggest competition is binders -- physical binders." Bhushan's Squint uses AI and augmented reality (AR) technology to capture and document the expert knowledge of experienced factory operators. The idea is this: to use AI to turn everyday workers into experts and to make the invisible backbone of the economy smarter, safer, and more efficient. "We've basically built a manufacturing intelligence platform... that uses AI to extract that knowledge from operators who have been in the environment for 30 years. They have all this stuff up here," said Bhushan, gesturing to his head. "We extract it by watching them do the work. Then AI auto-documents it and creates procedures. From there, we can enable anyone to be an expert on pretty much any task." Squint has raised a $40 million Series B at a valuation of $265 million, Fortune has exclusively learned. The Westly Group and TCV led the round, with participation from existing investors Sequoia Capital and Menlo Ventures. Bhushan founded the company in 2021, and the company's current customers include PepsiCo, Michelin, and Ford, tens of thousands of operators at hundreds of factories. The round comes at a time when "every industrial company in the world is searching for ways to keep their workforce... ahead of the curve," said Steve Westly, founder and managing partner at The Westly Group, via email. This is, of course, both because of Trump-fueled geopolitical tensions rising around manufacturing and the rise of AI. "In our factories, there's more desire to insource," said Sequoia partner Jess Lee. "There's more pressure and incentive to move manufacturing back here. For geopolitical reasons too, there are folks in some of the essential critical industries to manufacture here... In order to make that possible, factory productivity really matters." To Lee -- who met Bhushan when both were at Yahoo, he as an engineer and she in the aftermath of the company's acquisition of her startup Polyvore -- the realm of physical work is vast and filled with untapped potential. "The world of tech is so white collar-focused, so much about digital work," Lee told Fortune. "But the world of physical work is enormous, and it supplies us with all the things that power even the digital industry. I think tech has barely scratched the surface of modernizing that, and I think that's where some of the next biggest tech companies are going to be created." Bhushan once built features for Yahoo's fantasy sports platform, where he also met Tim Tully, partner at Menlo Ventures, who led Squint's pre-seed on the idea that "there was a thirst for richer experiences in manufacturing," a thesis that he says via email has "rung true." Though he's moved on from building the platform millions play fantasy sports on, Bhushan keeps sports metaphors close. "We have this saying inside the company -- it's our number one value -- 'dunk the three,'" he said. "Do the thing no one has ever done. No one's ever dunked a three in an NBA game, right? But when someone dunks a three, it'll become a stat. Then, more people will dunk threes. That's how it works." But no one can dunk a three, I point out. "Well, Michael Jordan did in Space Jam," Bhushan laughed. "He extended his hand, and dunked the three. That's what we're trying to do with our tech." Joey Abrams curated the deals section of today's newsletter. Subscribe here. - Life Safety Inspection Vault, a Pocatello, Idaho-based compliance platform for fire departments, raised $28.7 million in funding from Mainsail Partners. - Mutares agreed to acquire the crane business unit of Hyva, an Elk Grove Village, Ill.-based provider of innovative and highly efficient transport solutions for the commercial vehicle and environmental service industries. Financial terms were not disclosed. - EIG agreed to acquire a 49.87% stake in Transportadora de Gas del Peru S.A., a Lima, Peru-based manager of natural gas and natural gas liquids pipelines. Financial terms were not disclosed. - Bullish, a Cayman Islands-based crypto exchange, now plans to raise up to $990 million in an offering of 30 million shares priced between $32 and $33. The company posted $167 million in revenue for the year ending March 31, 2025. Pu Luo Chung VC, Alexander See, Bullish Global, Galaxy Digital Ventures, Camomille Global Opportunities Fund, and EFM Global Growth Master Fund back the company.

Squint gets $40M in funding to accelerate human-to-machine collaboration in manufacturing - SiliconANGLE

Squint gets $40M in funding to accelerate human-to-machine collaboration in manufacturing Industrial automation startup Squint Inc. said today it has raised $40 million in a Series B funding round that values it at $265 million, as it bids to build on a vision of "agentic manufacturing", where humans collaborate with artificial intelligence agents. The round was co-led by The Westly Group and TCV, and saw participation from previous investors Sequoia Capital and Menlo Ventures, and highlights the growing confidence investors have in technologies that bridge the gap between digital efficiency and human expertise. Squint was founded by former Splunk Inc. executive Devin Bhushan, who told Fortune in an exclusive interview that the startup wants to streamline the way manufacturing organizations capture and share operational knowledge. To do this, the company has created a platform that merges AI with augmented reality in order to convert knowledge that's trapped in worker's minds and transform it into interactive, step-by-step guides that can be used to teach others their skills. In an era marked by labor shortages and rapid technological evolution, it's an idea that has a lot of appeal. Bhushan said the startup has built a "manufacturing intelligence platform" that's designed to extract the expertise from workers such as the operators of highly sophisticated machines. "They have all this stuff up here," Bhushan explained, pointing to his head. He talked about how manufacturing dates back several million years, from the days when early humans were making primitive stone tools to today's automated factory lines, yet much of it is still reliant on human intuition. "We extract it by watching them do the work, then the AI auto-documents [what they're doing] and creates procedures," Bhushan said. With the resulting, AI-generated manuals and guides, which can be accessed via a mobile app, Bhushan reckons the company can "enable anyone to be an expert on pretty much any task." They are complemented by "agentic" AI systems that guide workers in real-time to reduce errors and accelerate onboarding, he said. He added that the approach not only improves training but also helps to enhance productivity in manufacturing, because it helps to improve operational consistency. Shaun Chaudhuri, a partner at The Westly Group, said the ability to capture manufacturing intelligence is vital in an age where operational complexity is increasing, yet at the same time, an entire generation of experienced workers is set to retire. "The industrial workforce is facing a widening knowledge gap," he pointed out. "Squint bridges that gap by delivering AI-powered workflows to the factory floor, equipping operators with real-time intelligence that can scale." While Bhushan concedes that Squint still faces challenges around integration with legacy systems and ensuring data security in sensitive environments, he points to the company's strong traction with enterprises such as PepsiCo Inc. and Compagnie Générale des Établissements Michelin SCA, better known as Michelin. PepsiCo has integrated Squint's AI-powered AR tools to capture the expertise of its best workers in its bottling and packaging facilities, and says the technology has helped it to cut training times by half. Meanwhile, Michelin uses Squint's platform to standardize complex assembly processes across its global manufacturing plants to support its investments in digital twins and predictive maintenance. The money from today's round brings Squint's total amount raised to more than $59 million. It plans to use the funds to expand into new markets and advance its platform's capabilities. To do this, it will hire aggressively and expand its team of AI agents, especially in the area of predictive analytics, in order to try and forecast equipment and machinery failures before they occur. Bhushan said this could potentially save millions of hours in downtime for the company's clients.