Squint gets $40M in funding to accelerate human-to-machine collaboration in manufacturing – News

Industrial automation startup Squint Inc. said today it has raised $40 million in a Series B funding round that values it at $265 million, as it bids to build on a vision of “agentic manufacturing,” where humans collaborate with artificial intelligence agents.

The round was co-led by The Westly Group and TCV, and saw participation from previous investors Sequoia Capital and Menlo Ventures, and highlights the growing confidence investors have in technologies that bridge the gap between digital efficiency and human expertise.

Squint was founded by former Splunk Inc. executive Devin Bhushan, who told Fortune in an exclusive interview that the startup wants to streamline the way manufacturing organizations capture and share operational knowledge. To do this, the company has created a platform that merges AI with augmented reality in order to convert knowledge that’s trapped in worker’s minds and transform it into interactive, step-by-step guides that can be used to teach others their skills.

In an era marked by labor shortages and rapid technological evolution, it’s an idea that has a lot of appeal. Bhushan said the startup has built a “manufacturing intelligence platform” that’s designed to extract the expertise from workers such as the operators of highly sophisticated machines.

“They have all this stuff up here,” Bhushan explained, pointing to his head. He talked about how manufacturing dates back several million years, from the days when early humans were making primitive stone tools to today’s automated factory lines, yet much of it still relies on human intuition.

“We extract it by watching them do the work, then the AI auto-documents [what they’re doing] and creates procedures,” Bhushan said.

With the resulting, AI-generated manuals and guides, which can be accessed via a mobile app, Bhushan reckons the company can “enable anyone to be an expert on pretty much any task.” They are complemented by “agentic” AI systems that guide workers in real-time to reduce errors and accelerate onboarding, he said. He added that the approach not only improves training but also helps to enhance productivity in manufacturing, because it helps to improve operational consistency.

Shaun Chaudhuri, a partner at the Westly Group, said the ability to capture manufacturing intelligence is vital in an age where operational complexity is increasing, yet at the same time, an entire generation of experienced workers is set to retire. “The industrial workforce is facing a widening knowledge gap,” he pointed out. “Squint bridges that gap by delivering AI-powered workflows to the factory floor, equipping operators with real-time intelligence that can scale.”

While Bhushan concedes that Squint still faces challenges around integration with legacy systems and ensuring data security in sensitive environments, he points to the company’s strong traction with enterprises such as PepsiCo Inc. and Compagnie Générale des Établissements Michelin SCA, better known as Michelin.

PepsiCo has integrated Squint’s AI-powered AR tools to capture the expertise of its best workers in its bottling and packaging facilities, and says the technology has helped it to cut training times by half. Meanwhile, Michelin uses Squint’s platform to standardize complex assembly processes across its global manufacturing plants to support its investments in digital twins and predictive maintenance.

The money from today’s round brings Squint’s total amount raised to more than $59 million. It plans to use the funds to expand into new markets and advance its platform’s capabilities. To do this, it will hire aggressively and expand its team of AI agents, especially in the area of predictive analytics, in order to try and forecast equipment and machinery failures before they occur.

Bhushan said this could potentially save millions of hours in downtime for the company’s clients.

Images: Squint