CloudNC Lands $20M To Expand Its AI Software For Precision Manufacturing

CloudNC, a London based manufacturing software company, has raised 20 million dollars, roughly 17.2 million euros, in a Series B extension round to widen adoption of its AI powered machining software and fund the launch of a second product built around quoting.

The round was led by Nimble Ventures, a US venture investor, with participation from Calculus Venture Capital, Entrepreneur First and LM Ventures, the venture capital fund of defence contractor Lockheed Martin. The new capital brings CloudNC's total funding raised since its founding to 128 million dollars, and marks its first major round in roughly four years.

CloudNC was founded in 2015 by chief executive Theo Saville and Chris Emery, now the company's chief science officer. The company's flagship product, CAM Assist, targets one of the slowest steps in computer numerical control machining, the process of translating a finished part design into a machining strategy and a set of toolpaths a machine can actually run. That step is skilled, repetitive work that can take a human programmer hours to complete for a single part, and it is often the reason a machine shop with idle equipment still ends up with a backlog of work waiting to be programmed. CAM Assist uses AI to automate large parts of that process, letting teams move from design to production faster and helping experienced operators increase how much work they get through in a given day.

Beyond its software business, CloudNC also operates its own working precision machining factory in Chelmsford, outside London. That factory setup means the company tests CAM Assist against the same operational constraints its customers deal with day to day, rather than purely against internal simulations, an arrangement that has been part of the company's pitch since early backers Atomico and Episode 1 first invested.

CAM Assist has already been adopted by more than 1,000 machine shops globally, with a large and growing share of that customer base in the United States. Lockheed Martin sits in an unusual dual role in the company's story, both as an investor through LM Ventures and as a named customer alongside precision manufacturer Major Tool and Machine. That defence industry connection extends further into the company's roadmap, with CloudNC actively working alongside Knox Systems to secure FedRAMP certification for CAM Assist. Achieving that certification would clear the software for use by US government agencies and defence contractors handling sensitive manufacturing workloads, a market that requires a level of security and compliance most commercial software does not need to meet.

Alongside expanding CAM Assist into new and existing markets, CloudNC will use the new funding to develop and launch Quote Agent, an AI tool aimed at one of the most manual and commercially important steps in the machining process, assessing incoming jobs and preparing quotes for customers. Quoting sits in front of every job a precision manufacturer takes on, and shops that move too slowly through that process risk losing work to competitors who can respond faster, while shops that quote inaccurately risk losing money on jobs they do win. Quote Agent is expected to launch later in 2026, extending CloudNC's product line beyond the programming stage CAM Assist already addresses and into the commercial front end of a machine shop's operations.

John Burbank, founder of lead investor Nimble Ventures, has linked the investment directly to a broader argument about onshoring manufacturing capacity, suggesting that automating CNC programming work through software like CAM Assist can support meaningful increases in domestic manufacturing and a more resilient global production base. That framing positions CloudNC's software as infrastructure for a wider shift in where precision manufacturing work gets done, rather than simply a productivity tool for machine shops that already exist.

CloudNC's raise lands at a moment when manufacturing software is drawing renewed investor interest, driven partly by defence and supply chain concerns and partly by a persistent shortage of skilled machinists and programmers across the industry. With CAM Assist already embedded in more than 1,000 shops and a second product aimed at the quoting bottleneck due within months, the company's near term test is largely one of execution, turning its existing customer base and defence sector relationships into a broader manufacturing software business rather than a single point tool used for one stage of the machining process.