Backflip, a cutting-edge 3D generative AI company, has officially emerged from stealth with an impressive $30 million in funding, co-led by NEA and Andreessen Horowitz (a16z). The company also garnered backing from high-profile angel investors including Kevin Scott, Microsoft CTO and LinkedIn co-founder, Rich Miner, Android founder and AI futurist, and Ashish Vaswani, co-author of the influential Attention is All You Need paper.
Founded by CEO Greg Mark and CTO David Benhaim, the duo behind the industrial 3D printing company Markforged, Backflip has set out with an ambitious goal: to transform how designers and engineers bring ideas to life. “What if designers and engineers could go from concept to creation at the speed of their imagination? What if one designer could move as fast as 100?” asked the Backflip team, expressing the core vision behind their innovative approach.
In her statement, Lila Tretikov, NEA Partner and Head of AI Strategy, shared her enthusiasm about the company’s potential. “The promise of AI extends far beyond transforming knowledge—it is the catalyst for building a world once only imagined. 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, revitalizing American manufacturing, strengthening national security, and accelerating economic prosperity.”
Andrew Chen, General Partner at Andreessen Horowitz, echoed this sentiment. “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 now within reach thanks to the convergence of 3D photorealism from gaming and VFX with physics-based simulations from engineering. That’s why we’re so excited about Backflip’s new technology, which will allow users to turn text into physical reality.”
Currently, engineers and designers use traditional 3D design software to create digital models of their ideas before turning them into real-world products. While these tools are essential, they are often slow, limiting the potential of the design process. Every product that hits the market is missing features or refinements that could have been added if the design process were faster and more efficient.
Greg Mark, reflecting on the past half-century of technological innovation, noted, “Each era of humanity is defined by the tools we harness. The last 50 years have brought remarkable advancements in software and electronics, but physical product design has lagged behind. We’re building the next-generation tool that enables a small team to move with the velocity of the largest engineering teams, marking a giant leap forward for bringing design and manufacturing back to the U.S.”
Backflip’s breakthrough technology is changing the status quo. The company has developed an AI-powered design platform that significantly accelerates the design process, transforming complex designs that once took days into models that can be created in just minutes. This tool allows users to generate 3D-printable models from simple text descriptions or even photographs of broken items that need to be replaced.
“Our vision is simple: AI language models capture how we think, vision models capture how we see, and Backflip is creating foundational models that capture how we build,” said CTO David Benhaim. The company has created a novel neural representation that teaches AI to think in 3D, unlocking a new category of models. This breakthrough yields 60 times more efficient training, 10 times faster inference, and 100 times the spatial resolution compared to existing state-of-the-art methods.
Backflip’s next-generation AI foundation models are designed to form the core of the real-world design process. These foundational models will serve as the backbone for the physical products of tomorrow, helping industries like manufacturing, aerospace, and robotics move faster, more efficiently, and with greater precision.
The Backflip founding team, Greg Mark and David Benhaim, brings a wealth of experience in both hardware and software. Before launching Backflip, they co-founded Markforged, where they revolutionized the 3D printing industry by introducing carbon fiber and mixed-metal printing technologies. These innovations resulted in parts that were 20 times stronger than traditional 3D printed materials, enabling applications in industries with the highest performance demands, including aerospace, military, and automotive manufacturing. Under their leadership, Markforged grew to a $2.1 billion valuation and went public in 2021. Their technology is used in mission-critical applications in industries ranging from the International Space Station to U.S. nuclear submarines.
With this new venture, Backflip is positioned to disrupt industries around the globe, from advanced manufacturing to the creation of everyday products. The company’s AI-powered tools promise to transform how we design, create, and manufacture the physical world, marking a major leap forward in the next industrial revolution.
