OpenAIs former research chief launches Arda at a 15bn valuation

Arda Industries, founded by OpenAI's former research chief Bob McGrew, has come out of stealth with $232 million in funding, the company announced on Tuesday. Its AI software turns new product designs into working assembly lines.

The total includes a $160 million Series A at a $1.5 billion valuation, co-led by Altimeter, Accel and Khosla Ventures. XYZ Venture Capital, 8VC, SV Angel and Felicis also took part. It follows a $72 million seed round led by Accel and Founders Fund. McGrew first spoke about the company to CNBC, in an exclusive interview.

“It's a user interface and an agent that does for manufacturing engineers what Claude or Cursor does for programmers,” McGrew told CNBC.

Already in use at Anduril

Arda's agent works from a product's CAD files and other design documents. It works out the assembly order, writes the instructions and lays out the stations. A design change can then reach the factory floor without stopping production.

Anduril, valued at $90bn this month, was its first design partner and customer. It uses Arda inside its ArsenalOS manufacturing software. Basic work instructions that took 10 hours now take 15 minutes, Anduril found. More complex engineering work that took up to 30 hours now takes about 2.5 hours.

“We would be behind on our production goals without it,” said Matt Grimm, Anduril's co-founder and chief operating officer.

Shenzhen in West Texas

Arda says programming conventional automation for a single station can take three to six months and cost close to $1 million. A new phone, meanwhile, stays at full production for only about four months. No one has successfully built a smartphone in America, the company says. The Trump Mobile T1, sold as made in America, turned out to be a Taiwanese phone.

Arda is starting in defence and in the data centre supply chain, with makers of transformers and electrical equipment. Consumer electronics come next. Robotics is next. Arda is prototyping AI agents that program robots to carry out its assembly plans.

“Imagine a fully automated version of Shenzhen in West Texas – that's what we want to make possible,” said McGrew.

Apoorv Agrawal of Altimeter, who led the round, told CNBC that manufacturing is a $3 trillion industry in the US alone.

“Yes, the price is steep today, but the long-term opportunity is very high,” said Agrawal.

From OpenAI and Palantir

McGrew led product and engineering at Palantir through its first decade. He led OpenAI's research team from 2018 to 2024 and left as chief research officer in September 2024. He is also one of the tech executives who joined the US Army Reserve's Detachment 201.

Chief AI officer Augustus Odena co-founded Adept and worked at Google Brain and Meta. Chief technology officer Alex Mark led engineering at Palantir and worked on IRS Direct File. The fourth co-founder, Jakob Frick, worked at Palantir and SpaceXAI.