AI Platform Unlocks Speed and Scale, Accelerates Quoting Process
Uptool, the AI manufacturing software startup on a mission to accelerate U.S. manufacturing speed and productivity, has announced its first product: AI quoting software designed to eliminate a critical bottleneck for U.S. small and midsize manufacturers. The AI quoting software helps shops quote 10 times faster and win more business. Backed by $6 million in seed funding from leading industrial tech and vertical AI investors including Khosla Ventures, Eclipse, Bessemer Venture Partners and Kleiner Perkins, Uptool is strengthening the U.S.’ industrial edge: its pace of innovation, powered by hundreds of thousands of domestic SMB manufacturers.
SMBs make up 98% of the manufacturing industry, and their ability to deliver high-quality parts at speed impacts the entire supply chain. However, the fast-paced, diverse operations within this sector have made it historically difficult to build and implement software across a fragmented market. As a result, many shops were left behind during the wave of digital transformation that most other industries embraced. Today, the average shop runs at a fraction of its production capacity as owners manage paperwork and manual processes.
“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,” said Benny Buller, co-founder and CEO of Uptool. “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.”
Uptool applies AI directly to the workflows that slow manufacturers down and bottleneck resources. Its AI quoting software can be implemented in an hour with no upfront cost. Key features allow customers to cut quoting time from hours to minutes, which helps win more business and increase productivity.
- Out-of-the-box dashboards track quote status, revisions and customer communications.
- AI automatically extracts and organizes emails, computer-aided design files, engineering drawings and bill of materials across every one of a shop’s emails.
- Dozens of material and operations calculators provide accurate yet flexible estimates to capture unique workflows.
“I would spend hours a day quoting – time we don’t charge for,” said Nathan Dillon, general manager and owner of VelocityCNC. “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.”
With almost 50 years of combined manufacturing and technology experience at companies like Velo3D, Applied Materials and Carbon, Uptool’s founders, Buller and Alex Huckstepp, worked closely with manufacturers and experienced the issues that prevent them from running at full production capacity. These include lack of speed and responsiveness, bottlenecked resources, underutilized equipment and a skilled workforce shortage. They founded Uptool to help SMB manufacturers transform operations with greater speed and productivity.
“Nearly 98% of U.S. manufacturing firms are SMBs — representing over 40% of the industrial workforce — but their capacity is fragmented and largely invisible,” said Charly Mwangi, partner at Eclipse. “Uptool digitizes this long tail of manufacturers, injecting speed and transparency into the supply chain. That’s the only way reindustrialization actually scales.”
About Uptool
Uptool is an AI software startup on a mission to accelerate U.S. manufacturing speed and productivity. Uptool’s AI quoting software unblocks operational bottlenecks plaguing small, high-mix manufacturers like machine and fabrication shops to ensure they can meet the demands of global hardware innovation. Founded in 2024 in San Mateo, California, Uptool has raised $6M in seed funding from leading industrial tech and vertical AI investors including Khosla Ventures, Eclipse, Bessemer Venture Partners and Kleiner Perkins.
