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Forgepoint, a New York startup, raised a $9.8M seed led by Primary Venture Partners and a16z speedrun to automate the quote desk at manufacturers with its AI sales rep, Frank.
Key Takeaways
- Forgepoint raised a $9.8M seed round on October 14, 2026, co-led by Primary Venture Partners and a16z speedrun.
- Frank reached seven-figure ARR within six months of launch; customers cut time-to-quote by more than 55%.
- Valuation was not disclosed. Angels from OpenAI, Brex, Vercel and SoFi also joined.
Lead
Forgepoint, a New York company building AI software for manufacturers' back offices, announced a $9.8M seed round on October 14, 2026. Primary Venture Partners and a16z speedrun led the investment, and angel investors from OpenAI, Brex, Vercel and SoFi also took part. The company did not disclose a valuation.
Its first product is Frank, an AI inside sales rep that handles the path from request for quotation (RFQ) to purchase order. Forgepoint says Frank reached seven-figure annual recurring revenue within six months of launch, and that hundreds of engineers, estimators and sales reps now use it each week.
What Does Frank Actually Do?
Frank reads incoming RFQs, including attached part files, and flags missing specifications. It then applies each shop's own pricing rules and cost model, drafts a quote, and sends it to a human for approval. Once approved, Frank sends the quote and manages follow-up.
Each Frank deployment gets its own company email address and learns the shop's operating procedures. Engineering questions that need judgment are routed to staff rather than guessed at. Target customers include metal service centers, foundries, injection molders, fabricators, stamping shops and machine shops.
The design keeps a person as the final approver. "Before Forgepoint, we were building quotes by hand and barely keeping up. Now, Frank drafts and I can approve it in two minutes," said Chas Aday, founder and CRO of SIP Manufacturing, a customer.
Who Is Behind Forgepoint?
CEO Jack Strauss previously worked at Northrop Grumman, in Bain & Company's advanced manufacturing practice, and at Xwing, which Joby Aviation acquired. He holds an MBA from Stanford. CTO Alex Pareto led engineering for Brex's Spend Management organization and earlier founded Demeanor, a Y Combinator-backed company acquired by NTWRK.
The pairing is a manufacturing operator and a fintech engineer. That mix fits a product whose hard problem is encoding messy pricing logic into software, not building a chatbot. Forgepoint has not said how many customers it has or how large its team is.
How Strong Are the Early Numbers?
Forgepoint reports that across its customers, monthly quote throughput is up an average of 30%, and time-to-quote has fallen by more than 55%. These are company-reported figures, and the customer base behind them is undisclosed. Seven-figure ARR is a modest bar in absolute terms, but six months from launch is a short window in a sector with long sales cycles.
A skeptical read asks what the speedup is worth. Faster quotes help only if shops have the capacity to fill the extra work, and a 30% rise in quoting volume does not guarantee a matching rise in won jobs. Win rates, margins and error rates on automated quotes are the numbers that would test the pitch, and none have been published.
"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."
Who Else Is Chasing Manufacturing Quotes?
The category is filling fast in 2026. London-based CloudNC raised $20M in September and plans a Quote Agent tool. London's Isembard raised a £37.5M Series A in March and runs its own and franchised factories with quoting software. Berlin's Plato raised a $14.5M seed in February to automate sales, quoting and workflows for wholesale distributors.
Forgepoint differs by selling software to existing shops rather than operating factories, and by focusing on the sales desk instead of machine programming. That keeps its capital needs low but leaves it dependent on integration with whatever ERP and pricing systems each shop already runs. Incumbent quoting and ERP vendors could also add similar features.
What Will the Money Fund?
Forgepoint plans to spend the seed round on three things: expanding Frank, deepening integrations with manufacturers' existing systems, and growing the team. Integration work matters most. A quote is only as good as the cost data behind it, and shops store that data in spreadsheets, legacy ERPs and the heads of senior estimators.
The next test is whether Frank's results hold as the customer base moves beyond early adopters. Forgepoint's roadmap, in Fredericks' words, starts with quoting, which implies later expansion into order planning and management.
Outlook
Forgepoint enters the quoting race with a $9.8M seed, seven-figure ARR, and two lead investors backing a narrow wedge: the sales desk at small and mid-sized manufacturers. Its reported gains in speed and throughput are encouraging but unaudited. Competitors have raised comparable sums in 2026, so the company's next disclosures on customer count, win rates and retention will show whether its lead is durable.
