Uptool, an AI manufacturing software startup, has emerged from stealth and introduced its first product to remove a major bottleneck for U.S. small- and midsize manufacturers: quoting. The company says its AI quoting software helps machine and fabrication shops reduce quoting time from hours to minutes, enabling them to respond faster, win more work, and increase shop utilization as demand and complexity in hardware supply chains continue to rise.
The San Mateo, California-based company announced it has raised $6 million in seed funding from Khosla Ventures, Eclipse, Bessemer Venture Partners, and Kleiner Perkins. Uptool is positioning its financing and product launch as part of a broader effort to accelerate domestic manufacturing speed and productivity by modernizing operational workflows that still rely heavily on manual processes across many small, high-mix shops.
Uptool is targeting a segment it argues has been left behind by enterprise manufacturing software. While small and midsize businesses account for the vast majority of manufacturing firms, Uptool says the market’s fragmentation and wide variation in workflows have made it difficult for traditional software to fit. As a result, many shop owners and operators remain stuck in paperwork-heavy routines, juggling customer communications, files, and estimating tasks that consume time but do not directly generate revenue.
The company’s initial product focuses on quoting because it sits at the front of the revenue funnel and often dictates how quickly a shop can turn inbound requests into accepted work. Uptool says its system can be implemented in about an hour with no upfront cost, and features are designed to centralize and organize information that typically arrives in scattered email threads and attachments.
According to Uptool, the platform includes dashboards to track quote status, revisions, and customer communications. It also automatically extracts and organizes emails and key manufacturing documents, including CAD files, engineering drawings, and bills of materials, across a shop’s inboxes. The software also provides material and operations calculators to help shops generate accurate estimates while accommodating shop-specific assumptions that often determine pricing and lead times.
Uptool was founded in 2024 by Benny Buller, co-founder and CEO, and Alex Huckstepp. The company says the two bring nearly 50 years of combined experience across manufacturing and technology roles at companies including Velo3D, Applied Materials, and Carbon. Uptool’s pitch is that this background gave the team direct exposure to the constraints that keep many shops from operating at capacity, including slow responsiveness, constrained quoting resources, underutilized equipment, and workforce shortages.
The company is also framing its product as infrastructure for a more transparent, scalable supply chain. By digitizing quoting and intake across a long tail of smaller suppliers, Uptool and its backers argue the industry can make capacity more visible and improve the speed at which work can be sourced, priced, and scheduled, which becomes increasingly important as reindustrialization efforts collide with limited labor and highly variable demand.
Uptool says early customer outcomes indicate meaningful productivity improvements, with at least one shop reporting a step change in sales performance tied to faster quoting and less administrative time.
KEY QUOTES
“Frontier AI model breakthroughs have allowed us to reimagine how software can serve the hundreds of thousands of U.S. manufacturers left behind by modern enterprise software that is incompatible with their unique needs. We are building an AI platform to boost their business and bring their entire operations into the modern era. It’s been incredibly rewarding to see our initial customers rapidly grow their sales and free them from their desks so they can spend more time with their customers or on the shop floor manufacturing parts.”
Benny Buller, Co-Founder And CEO, Uptool
“I would spend hours a day quoting – time we don’t charge for. Uptool has enabled me to cut my quoting time 10x in 2025, contributing to my biggest sales year to date – more than double the previous year.”
Nathan Dillon, General Manager And Owner, VelocityCNC
“Nearly 98% of U.S. manufacturing firms are SMBs — representing over 40% of the industrial workforce — but their capacity is fragmented and largely invisible. Uptool digitizes this long tail of manufacturers, injecting speed and transparency into the supply chain. That’s the only way reindustrialization actually scales.”
Charly Mwangi, Partner, Eclipse
