Foundry Robotics: Powering American Manufacturing for the Next Century
Our investment in Foundry Robotics
Today we’re thrilled to announce our partnership with Adarsh Kulkarni and the Foundry Robotics team as they build the “Everything Factory”- an AI+robotics first, assembly-focused, dual-use contract manufacturer to power the next century of American manufacturing.
A Builder Who’s Been in the Arena
At Garuda, we start with founders. As soon as we met Adarsh, it was clear his career has been building toward this company and that he had the potential to build a generational company to meet this moment when AI, hardware, and the national interest are aligning.
He was an early employee at Ghost Robotics (acquired for $400M), a core autonomy engineer who worked hand-in-hand with the DoD to deploy robots for defense and industrial applications. He then joined Scale AI as a software engineer and rose to Head of Robotics. And he graduated with degrees in robotics from Penn’s GRASP Lab. He’s a technical builder with deep robotics expertise, proven commercial execution at scale, defense credibility, and the will and drive to tackle a problem of this scale. And he’s already shown an ability to recruit A+ people - Tier 1 capital partners, ambitious early employees with no shortage of options, and customers - around the table to Foundry in a short period of time, a critical skill in the competitive world of hardware and AI startups.
Modular Domestic Manufacturing Powered by AI
The United States has a manufacturing problem. The country has steadily fallen behind Asia in production capacity, and our supply chains remain brittle. By some estimates, by 2030 China will increase its share of manufacturing, including for advanced technologies, to 45% vs. 11% for the United States. The defense industrial base is particularly strained — the DoD and its contractors need hardware produced domestically, at speed, but the infrastructure to do so barely exists for many critical components.
Traditional factory automation is narrow, expensive, and designed for single-product lines. Retooling a factory for a new assembly takes months and millions of dollars. For hardware companies that need low-to-mid volume production of complex assemblies — think drones, robot dogs, battery packs, satellite components — there’s often no good domestic option.
Foundry’s bet is that Vision-Language-Action (VLA) foundation models, modern robotics, and manufacturing software expertise, unlock the ability to do generalized robotic assembly across diverse operations and different products at scale, and that the right business model entry point is to serve as a dual-use contract manufacturer.
If they are right, the implications are transformative: a factory that can assemble many different products, switching between them without the traditional retooling overhead. Modular, cell-based manufacturing powered by foundation models: the “everything factory.”
Dual-Use + Reshoring
We are particularly excited about Foundry’s focus on building a dual-use company from the start. The company’s initial assembly targets are products in high demand from both commercial customers and the Department of Defense, and are primarily manufactured abroad today.
The regulatory environment has also never been more favorable for a business like this. Between the CHIPS Act, Buy American policies, DIU funding for defense manufacturing, and the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, there is significant, bipartisan government appetite and capital to support domestic manufacturing reshoring. Foundry is well positioned to ride these tailwinds simultaneously.
Let’s Go!
We’re proud to partner with Foundry Robotics alongside Khosla Ventures, Red Glass Ventures, Embark Ventures, Zero Shot Fund, Recall Capital, Hanabi Capital (Mike Volpe), and other friends. We can’t wait to see The Everything Factory become a reality and are thrilled to be along for the journey.
For more on Foundry Robotics, or if you are a technical builder excited to build the future of American manufacturing, visit foundryrobotics.ai.
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