Adam, one of the vital 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 have been getting time period sheets over e-mail with none conferences,” stated CEO Zach Dive (on the suitable 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, additionally they agreed on Adam’s roadmap — going shopper 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 best way 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 targeted on makers, not engineers. However AI fashions improved quicker than they anticipated, and Adam now plans to launch its copilot by the top of the yr, Dive stated.
Its preliminary instrument lets creators with out CAD expertise create 3D fashions from textual content prompts, however early suggestions confirmed that textual content wasn’t all the time one of the best ways to work together with 3D, Dive stated. “So for our copilot, we blended in several interplay paradigms; for instance, customers deciding on completely different components of the 3D object and conversing with it.”
This can 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’ phase as nicely. MecAgent, as an illustration, is already accessible, however Adam may capitalize on its viral launch.
Early momentum significantly helped with hiring, which continues 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 suitable context for reasoning in house.”
Capital and endorsements can each assist with this endeavor, and Adam now has its fair proportion of each, typically mixed. Moreover 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 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, quicker, and reaches a broader viewers,” he wrote on X.
Adam is already on its method 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 monthly. The startup hasn’t begun to monetize its soon-to-launch enterprise providing, however has “testers validating completely different options,” Dive stated.
This testing part is clearly needed: there’s fairly a bounce from serving to amateurs print 3D Pikachus to supporting engineers of their day by day work. Dive stated the startup doesn’t intend to interchange them, however as an alternative streamlines time-consuming duties similar to making use of the identical change to a number of CAD information.
With an preliminary deal with mechanical engineering, the startup plans to assist these professional customers generate function‑wealthy parametric designs in common CAD packages, starting with Onshape, which is thought for bringing CAD to the cloud and reshaping workflows. “The identical factor can be true with AI,” Dive predicted.
