CloudNC raises $20M to automate manufacturing bottlenecks with AI-powered CAM software

CloudNC, a British software company that has spent over a decade learning the precise mechanics of computer-controlled manufacturing, announced this week that it has raised $20 million in fresh capital. The funding brings the company's total haul since its 2015 founding to $128 million—a substantial sum for a business that operates in the unglamorous but economically vital world of industrial machining.

The company's core product, CAM Assist, sits at the intersection of artificial intelligence and practical manufacturing expertise. Before a computer-controlled machine can cut or shape a piece of material into a usable part—whether that part ends up in a car, a defense system, or consumer electronics—someone has to make dozens of decisions. How should the material be held? Which cutting tools should be deployed? At what speed should the machine operate? Traditionally, a skilled machinist or CAM programmer works through these questions manually, using specialized software to chart out the approach. It is cognitively demanding work that requires both technical knowledge and experience.

CloudNC's software, which integrates into existing CAM platforms like Autodesk Fusion and Mastercam, automates much of this initial planning phase. It suggests tool selections, approach angles, cutting speeds, and generates the code that instructs the CNC machine what to do. The human expert then reviews, modifies, and approves the recommendation before execution. Co-founder and CEO Theo Saville, who launched the company with Chris Emery, frames this not as replacing skilled workers but as amplifying them. "If traditional CAM is a powerful toolkit," he said, "then CAM Assist is more like an expert assistant sitting alongside the programmer, automating much of the first-pass thinking and repetitive setup so the human can review, improve, and approve the approach."

The company has built this capability through years of direct manufacturing experience. CloudNC operates its own factory and maintains an in-house software team that has worked through what Saville calls "a lot of hard lessons from real machining." More than 1,000 machine shops worldwide now use CAM Assist, with roughly 80 percent of the customer base located in the United States. The new round of funding, led by Nimble Ventures and including backing from Calculus Venture Capital, Entrepreneur First, and LM Capital—the venture arm of defense contractor Lockheed Martin—signals confidence in the company's trajectory and hints at interest from the defense sector.

The timing of the raise reflects broader pressures reshaping American manufacturing. U.S. machine shops are increasingly looking to reshore production that had moved overseas, even as the industry faces a persistent shortage of skilled workers. Shops need to operate faster and more efficiently with the workforce and equipment they already have. To that end, CloudNC is preparing to launch a new product called Quote Agent next month. The software applies similar logic to the quoting process, helping shops quickly assess the estimated cost and risk of taking on a new manufacturing project. This allows them to make faster decisions about which work to accept and which to decline.

Saville noted that the complexity of CNC machining is almost incomprehensible in scale. "There are more ways to machine a typical CNC part than there are atoms in the universe," he said. The company's strategy is to use AI and accumulated manufacturing knowledge to navigate that vast possibility space on behalf of human experts, making them more productive without asking them to cede control. With $128 million in the bank and a product that has found real adoption in a sector that has historically been slow to embrace software innovation, CloudNC is now positioned to expand its reach into new markets and deepen its foothold in the U.S., where the reshoring trend and labor constraints are creating urgent demand for the kind of productivity gains it offers.