Voxel Announces Seed Financing to Drive Additive Manufacturing with AI Design Platform

2023-05-23

CINCINNATI--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Voxel, a startup focused on transforming the additive manufacturing industry, has closed $1.7 million in seed financing and will open a new headquarters in Cincinnati, Ohio. Voxel’s additive manufacturing (AM) design platform uses a multi-physics artificial intelligence model to rapidly generate designs for high performance applications across industries. The company's unique approach eliminates guesswork and provides superior designs with significantly less engineering time and iterations, while ensuring manufacturability and component performance. Voxel’s seed financing was led by CincyTech, a Cincinnati-based venture firm focused on seeding and scaling a new generation of transformational Midwest companies.

'We believe that by fusing AI and additive manufacturing, we can provide a step change in how companies approach design and engineering problems. We aim to unlock manufacturing solutions previously undiscovered'

Additive manufacturing is growing at a 20% compound annual growth rate and is an important element of post-pandemic reshoring efforts and the future growth in US advanced manufacturing capabilities. Existing design methods and tools are optimized for the pre-AM manufacturing methods. Voxel’s platform unlocks the potential of current and emerging AM production methods across industries.

Voxel is launching in Cincinnati to take advantage of the region’s world class AM expertise and capabilities, and the region’s history as an advanced manufacturing hub. The region is a major exporter of aerospace parts, medical devices, and scientific instrumentation. General Electric has one of the world’s largest AM facilities in greater Cincinnati, while other leading edge additive companies, such as Zeda (formerly Vertex), are also located in the region. To fully leverage reshoring momentum, US leadership in state-of-the-art design and manufacturing innovations is essential.

Aaron Chow, CEO and co-founder, believes Voxel is poised to become the key enabling technology for AM to be broadly adopted for production use across a wide variety of industries. “We believe that by fusing AI and additive manufacturing, we can provide a step change in how companies approach design and engineering problems. We aim to unlock manufacturing solutions previously undiscovered,” said Chow.

“We believe that Voxel can deliver significant performance increases on each design iteration, and deliver faster go-to-market solutions. The cost savings related to reduced engineering requirements is a notable advancement,” said Zach Beller, CTO and co-founder.

“We were immediately drawn to Aaron and Zach’s passion and world-class expertise in additive manufacturing. Voxel’s platform unlocks the potential of AM, generating designs that otherwise would take many iterations and still be suboptimal. Voxel's platform is another example of our growing portfolio of AI-enhanced solutions that represent the upside of AI innovation.” said Doug Groh, Partner at CincyTech.

Aaron Chow graduated from the University of Michigan in Electrical Engineering. During his time at the University of Michigan he was awarded an Entrepreneurship Award and was chosen as a TEDx U of M Speaker. Aaron has 9 years of industry experience in additive manufacturing working, consulting and advising for many of the world’s most advanced companies such as: Autodesk, Johnson & Johnson, Ethicon, Northrop Grumman, NASA, GE Aviation, and Aurolab. Aaron led a team that was recognized as finalists for the Air Force Additive Manufacturing Olympics. Aaron is leading applications development and integration into commercially viable products, solving the design, validation, and manufacturing hurdles of adopting new technologies.

Zach Beller is a National Science Foundation Graduate Research Program (GRFP) Fellow at the Georgia Institute of Technology, where he is a Ph.D. candidate in Mechanical Engineering with research in antiferroelectric thin films. He is currently on track to receive his terminal Master’s Degree in Mechanical Engineering in July 2023. Zach is also a graduate of the University of Michigan in Mechanical Engineering, with extensive experience in Electrical Engineering. Zach has over 9 years of industry experience working with Sandia National Laboratories developing: reduced order, multi-physics modeling tools; advanced manufacturing systems; materials for use with additive manufacturing; and high-consequence safety devices for extreme environments. He was also on the team with co-founder, Aaron Chow, that was recognized as finalists for the Air Force Additive Manufacturing Olympics. Zach is leading the research and technical team at Voxel, advancing the development of Voxel’s predictive AI tools for commercialization.

About Voxel – Voxel utilizes advanced mathematics and artificial intelligence to rapidly generate functionally graded meta-materials for high-performance applications, with a focus on additive manufacturing. Voxel provides performance leaps in the defense, automotive, aerospace, medical, industrial, and other demanding areas and unlocks new capabilities for our customers. Voxel software allows for: significant performance increases on each design iteration, faster go-to-market with designs available quickly and guaranteed to be manufacturable, and cost savings as the program does not demand highly skilled engineering knowledge. Learn more at: www.voxel-group.com

About CincyTech - CincyTech is a Cincinnati-based venture firm focused on seeding and scaling a new generation of transformational Midwest companies. CincyTech invests in founders and researchers advancing novel science, technology, or insight that change or create large markets. Since 2007 CincyTech funds have invested in almost 90 seed-stage high-growth opportunities and support an active portfolio of more than 30 companies. Learn more at: www.cincytechusa.com