Backflip AI Model Turns Text Into Physical Reality

3D generative AI company Backflip announced it is emerging from stealth with $30 million in funding, co-led by NEA and Andreessen Horowitz (a16z). Angel investors include Chief Technology Officer of Microsoft and Co-Founder of LinkedIn Kevin Scott, Android founder and AI futurist Rich Miner, and Ashish Vaswani, co-author of the Attention is All You Need research paper.

The company was started by CEO Greg Mark and Chief Technology Officer David Benhaim—the founding team behind carbon fiber and metal industrial 3D printing company Markforged.

“The promise of AI extends far beyond transforming knowledge—it is the catalyst for building a world once only imagined,” says Lila Tretikov, NEA partner and head of AI Strategy. “I seek out extraordinary founders capable of driving this transformative vision across massive industries, from manufacturing and construction to transportation and robotics. The Backflip team stands at the forefront of this new industrial age at a pivotal time revitalizing American manufacturing, strengthening national security, and accelerating economic prosperity.”

Backflip is building tools and a foundational AI model that turbocharges the design process for everything in the physical world. Complex designs can now be done in minutes. It is also unveiling its first product, an AI-powered design platform that translates user inputs into high resolution, 3D-printable models. Users can produce real parts from a text description, or by snapping a photo of something that broke and needs to be replaced.

“AI language models capture how we think, vision models capture how we see, and Backflip is creating foundation models that capture how we build,” says Benhaim. “We’ve invented a novel neural representation that teaches AI to think in 3D, unlocking a new category of models. That development yields 60x more efficient training, 10x faster inference and 100x the spatial resolution of existing state of the art methods. Our series of 3D foundation models will form the kernel for building the real world.”

Mark and Benhaim are a team of hard tech and software founders who love to build. Prior to founding Backflip, they founded Markforged where they invented carbon fiber and mixed-metal 3D printing. These new processes drove an increase in strength of 3D printed parts and unlocked production capabilities for military, aerospace, and other manufacturing sectors with high performance standards, the co-founders say. They grew the company to a public listing in 2021 with a $2.1 billion valuation. Markforged parts are used daily in applications on places like the International Space Station, automotive manufacturing plants, and U.S. nuclear submarines.

About Backflip

Backflip is an AI technology for the designers and engineers who create the physical infrastructure of modern life. Its AI-powered 3D design software collapses barriers between idea and implementation and is built for creative problem-solvers across industries, including in sectors like aerospace, defense and transportation.

Designers, engineers and companies interested in working with Backflip can find out more on the web at backflip.ai.

Sources: Press materials received from the company and additional information gleaned from the company’s website.