Backflip Releases AI Model That Turns Text Into Physical Reality, Backed By $30 Million from NEA and Andreessen Horowitz

Repeat unicorn founders in hard tech joined by a world-class team of AI researchers from MIT are building the ultimate design tool for creating real things

​​Backflip’s core technology is foundational generative AI that lets anyone produce real parts and products from text and photos

Today, 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 CTO of Microsoft and co-founder of LinkedIn Kevin Scott, Android founder and AI futurist Rich Miner, and Ashish Vaswani, co-author of the groundbreaking Attention is All You Need research paper. Started by CEO Greg Mark and CTO David Benhaim — the founding team behind carbon fiber and metal industrial 3D printing company Markforged — Backflip started with an audacious premise: What if designers and engineers could go from ideas to reality at the speed of their imagination? What if one designer could move at the speed of 100? That’s the world Backflip is making a reality.

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“AI language models capture how we think, vision models capture how we see, and Backflip is creating foundation models that capture how we build”

“The promise of AI extends far beyond transforming knowledge — it is the catalyst for building a world once only imagined,” said 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.”

Andrew Chen, General Partner at a16z, added, “The line between the physical and virtual world continues to blur. At the cutting edge of all computing advancements has been the push to create 3D simulations in virtual worlds that mirror the real world. That holy grail is within reach now thanks to the convergence of 3D photorealism born out of gaming and VFX with complex physics-based simulations born out of engineering. That’s why we’re so excited about Backflip’s new technology, which will let users turn text into physical reality.”

Today, designers and engineers use traditional 3D design software to transform their ideas into digital models to build the modern world. These 3D design tools are the essential backbone of industry, and they unlock the ability to design, refine and create — from film industry special effects to next-generation aircraft, consumer packaged goods, video game characters, and everything in between. While powerful, they are incredibly slow, and fundamentally throttle the design process. Every product that ships has done so without features and refinements that could have been added if the design process was more efficient.

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“Each era of humanity is defined by the tools we harness. The last 50 years has brought incredible improvement to the pace of innovation in software and electronics, but the design of physical products has lagged behind. We’re building a next-generation design tool that allows a small team to move with the velocity of the biggest engineering army in the world. This is a giant leap forward in bringing design and manufacturing back to the U.S.,” said Mark.

Backflip is fundamentally reinventing this status quo, building tools and a foundational AI model that turbocharges the design process for everything in the physical world. Complex designs that would have taken days can now be done in minutes. Today, it is unveiling its first product, an AI-powered design platform that translates user inputs into high resolution, 3D-printable models, and collapses the barriers between idea and execution. Users can produce real parts from a simple text description, or even 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,” said 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 unique 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 a 20x increase in strength of 3D printed parts and unlocked production capabilities for military, aerospace, and other manufacturing sectors with unyieldingly high performance standards. They grew the company to a public listing in 2021 with a $2.1 billion valuation. Markforged parts are used every day in mission critical applications on places like the International Space Station, automotive manufacturing plants, and U.S. nuclear submarines.

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