Machining Startup Toolpath Scales Up with Industry Support and Key Acquisitions

Toolpath, an AI startup that quickly gained traction in machine shops nationwide, secured $10 million in seed round last October from a consortium of venture capitalists. Just seven months later, industrial giants are now flocking to invest, a sign that the market sees strong promise for the distributed machining platform.

Kennametal Inc. (NYSE: KMT) and existing investor ModuleWorks, a tooling automation software company, joined a new round of investment in Toolpath, bringing the Atlanta-based startup’s full funding amount to $20 million to date.

The new round happened “organically” but the companies that joined the next round are “strategic” additions, said CEO Al Whatmough. The vast majority of machine shops license ModuleWorks for their workflows. Pittsburgh-based Kennametal is also a massive player in the industry, manufacturing high-performance cutting tools and engineered components.

“This partnership represents a bold step in our digital transformation journey,” said Carlonda Reilly, Chief Technology Officer of Kennametal, in a press statement last week. “Toolpath’s platform amplifies our industry-leading application engineering expertise through its intuitive, intelligent software. It’s a smart, scalable solution that brings the power of AI to the shop floor in a practical and impactful way.”

Dr. Yavuz Murtezaoglu, Founder and Managing Director of ModuleWorks, added that “by combining our proven machining technologies with Toolpath’s advanced AI platform, we’re able to deliver powerful solutions into users’ hands faster. This investment naturally extends our mission to advance the manufacturing ecosystem through open collaboration, cross-industry partnerships and software innovation.”

It is not just Toolpath’s investor pool which has grown recently. The team has acquired two companies — Chatter and NC Viewer — over the last several months.

The team is also growing, with Whatmough saying that Toolpath has been busy expanding its go-to-market and its engineering team.

The Toolpath Team

Hypepotamus got a primer on Toolpath’s technology and its CAD and CAM software work when we spoke with the team last October. But at its core, the startup’s software integrates AI into the CAM process, optimizing tool selection and toolpath strategies inside a machine shop.

The Toolpath’s executive team is made up of CEO Whatmough (previously at Autodesk), co-founder Andy Power (previously co-founded CallRail), and CTO Justin Gray, Ph.D. (aerospace and computer engineer who created Toolpath’s proprietary “Part Comprehension Engine”).