Machina Labs is scaling robotic sheet forming into factory capacity

Machina Labs raised $124 million in Series C funding in February 2026. Axios reported that the company planned a robotic manufacturing facility of more than 200,000 square feet, with initial production focused on missile structures and airframes. Lockheed Martin Ventures, Balerion Space Ventures, Woven Capital and Strategic Development Fund participated in the round.

Team And Process

Edward Mehr co-founded Machina Labs in 2019 and is CEO. Babak Raeisinia is co-founder and head of applications and partnerships. TechCrunch reported that the company came out of stealth in 2021 with a $14 million Series A, then raised a $32 million Series B in 2023 co-led by NVentures and Innovation Endeavors.

Machina uses robots for sheet-metal forming without custom molds or dies for every part. Its site describes work on thin-walled, high-temperature alloys for aerospace and defense systems. The first process enabled by the platform was robotic sheet forming, where software-driven toolpaths shape sheet metal through robotic motion.

The 2023 Series B brought total funding to $45 million and added NVentures, NVIDIA venture capital arm, to the cap table. The round also included Innovation Endeavors, which had backed the company earlier. The funding supported customer demand, research and delivery of robotic manufacturing systems.

Factory Shift

Axios reported that Machina already had two existing plants at less than half the planned 200,000-square-foot facility size. The new factory is intended as the first footprint dedicated to mass production. Mehr told Axios that Machina had worked with the Air Force, and that the business mix was about 70 percent defense and 30 percent commercial at the time of the report.

Machina is applying the same robotic process to part families where conventional tooling can slow design change or low-volume production. Aerospace and defense parts often need qualified materials, repeatable process controls and traceable inspection. A larger factory increases the proof burden because the company has to show production repeatability beyond one-off robotic forming.

The Series C investor mix also narrows the likely demand path. Lockheed Martin Ventures connects to defense aerospace demand, Woven Capital connects to mobility manufacturing, and Strategic Development Fund connects to EDGE Group in Abu Dhabi. The round gives Machina capital linked to the customer sectors named in the factory plan.

The factory plan changes the evidence required from the company. Machina has disclosed funding, investors, process category, target sectors and planned facility scale. Public material does not yet show production cadence, part qualification timelines, yield, scrap rate, machine utilization, customer-level revenue, margin profile or repeat orders across defense and commercial customers.

Robotic sheet forming has a narrow evidence test: part quality, repeatability and speed compared with tooling-based manufacturing for the same application. Machina has shown capital access and a larger factory plan. The next public proof will come from qualified parts, delivered programs and measured economics from the new production footprint.

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