Backflip releases AI design software on back of $30M funding round

January 16, 2025

Backflip has released its AI-powered design platform that translates user inputs into high-resolution models suitable for Additive Manufacturing (Courtesy Backflip)
Backflip has released its AI-powered design platform that translates user inputs into high-resolution models suitable for Additive Manufacturing (Courtesy Backflip)

3D generative AI company Backflip, headquartered in Miami, Florida, USA, has emerged from stealth and launched its design platform, supported by $30 million in funding. Started by Greg Mark and David Benhaim, the founding team behind Markforged, the funding was 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.

The company believes that using traditional 3D design software used to develop digital models is slow, which can throttle the design process. The team posited that every finished product ships without features and refinements that could have been added if the design process had been more efficient.

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To address this, Backflip has released its AI-powered design platform that translates user inputs into high-resolution models suitable for Additive Manufacturing. Users can produce real parts from a simple text description or by snapping a photo of a broken component.

“Each era of humanity is defined by the tools we harness. The last fifty 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 US,” Mark stated.

“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.”

Using Backflip, designers can produce real parts from a simple text description or by snapping a photo of a broken component (Courtesy Backflip)
Using Backflip, designers can produce real parts from a simple text description or by snapping a photo of a broken component (Courtesy Backflip)

“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 revitalising 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.”

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