Forgepoint has raised $9.8 million in a seed funding round led by Primary Venture Partners and a16z speedrun. Angel investors from OpenAI, Brex, Vercel, and SoFi also participated in the round.
The company will use the funding to bring its AI sales assistant, Frank, to more manufacturing businesses, improve its connections with existing software systems, and expand its team.
Frank helps manufacturers prepare price quotes by reviewing part files and calculating prices based on each company’s own cost model. It also sends engineering tasks to team members for review and follows up with customers once quotes are approved.
Frank handles routine administrative tasks, while engineers, estimators, and sales teams remain responsible for technical work and business decisions. Since launching Frank, Forgepoint has reached more than $1 million in annual recurring revenue (ARR) within six months. Hundreds of professionals use the platform each week, helping customers increase their monthly quote output by an average of 30% and reduce the time needed to prepare quotes by more than 55%.
In early 2025, Strauss and co-founder Alex Pareto, formerly Head of Engineering for Brex’s Spend Management organization, spent months touring plants across the Midwest, shadowing employees and studying their processes to find where the bottlenecks were and why. “In those early days, we simply wanted to learn, as if we had been hired to do the job ourselves. We knew that before we could solve the problem, we needed to understand it deeply” said Alex Pareto, Co-Founder and CTO.
“We kept meeting manufacturers with strong demand and capable teams, but their best people were spending hours on administrative work. Speed is a competitive advantage, so we built Frank to keep jobs moving and free skilled operators to focus on the decisions only they can make,” said Jack Strauss, CEO and Co-Founder of Forgepoint.
On average, Forgepoint customers increase monthly quote throughput by 30% and cut time-to-quote by more than 55%, giving skilled operators more time back in their day.“Before Forgepoint, we were building quotes by hand and barely keeping up. Now, Frank drafts and I can approve it in two minutes. I’m spending less time entering data and more time serving my customers,” said Chas Aday, Founder and CRO of SIP Manufacturing.
As Frank works, it also preserves the emails, attachments and reasoning behind every decision, building a memory of how each shop prices work. That matters as veteran employees retire and manufacturers risk losing years of pricing logic, customer preferences and exceptions that live in their heads and inboxes. “A manufacturer’s ability to grow depends on how much work its team can quote, plan, and manage,” said Zach Fredericks, Principal at Primary Venture Partners. “Forgepoint is giving those teams more capacity, starting with quoting. We backed Jack and Alex because they understand the details of that work and have a clear ambition to bring the same approach across the entire manufacturing back office.”
Forgepoint develops AI assistants that help manufacturers automate office tasks and make their work processes more efficient, starting with sales and quote preparation.
Its main product, Frank, is an AI-powered sales assistant built for manufacturers. It collects customer requirements, prepares accurate price quotes, and responds to requests quickly, helping companies serve customers faster and stay ahead of competitors.
