Re:Build, which spun out Slate Auto, raises $2.1B

Re:Build, the Massachusetts-based manufacturing accelerator that spun retired EV startup Slate Auto successful 2023, has raised $2.1 cardinal

The institution said Tuesday that it volition usage the backing to “expand Re:Build’s capableness to manufacture hard tech products and motorboat caller concern startups,” which volition “ensure the astir innovative products tin beryllium made successful America for generations to come.” The concern was led by General Catalyst and JPMorganChase’s Strategic Investment Group. Other investors weren’t disclosed.

The backing circular comes arsenic expanding attraction and superior is flowing to the thought of gathering up manufacturing and proviso chains successful the United States, particularly arsenic a hedge distant from China.

“We started Re:Build due to the fact that the deindustrialization of America is an economical nonaccomplishment and nationalist information risk,” Re:Build co-founder Jeff Wilke said successful a statement. “This superior allows Re:Build to spell faster and further than would different beryllium possible, and physique a large manufacturing concern and a level for American concern leadership. The products and companies emerging from our ecosystem beryllium we tin assistance reconstruct America’s concern might.”

General Catalyst’s CEO Hemant Taneja echoed those sentiments successful a statement, saying, “General Catalyst has agelong believed that rebuilding American concern capableness is 1 of the astir important economical and nationalist information imperatives of our time.”

Taneja added: “To vie with China, re-industrialize the U.S., and revitalize the towns and jobs that person been near behind, we request level companies that tin run astatine genuine standard — and we request our innovation ecosystem to larn however to physique hardware again.”

Founded successful 2020, Re:Build bills itself arsenic “America’s reply to Shenzhen,” and it has galore ties to Amazon. It was co-founded by Wilke, who was Amazon’s erstwhile commercialized CEO. Wei Gao, a longtime Amazon VP and method advisor to Bezos, is Re:Build’s main integer and merchandise officer. Multiple different Re:Build executives besides worked for the e-commerce giant.

Re:Build claims to person “launched hundreds of products and accumulation systems” implicit its six-year existence. The institution tends to run 2 ways: It enters partnerships with concern companies to “design, engineer, and manufacture products astatine standard crossed verticals including aerospace and defense,” and it incubates startups successful “critical, underserved markets.”

Re:Build says its web of companies employs much than 2,100 radical successful the U.S. and houses much than 2.4 cardinal quadrate feet of manufacturing capacity.

Wilke and his co-founder Miles Arnone came up with the thought of Slate Auto successful 2022 and decided to rotation it retired successful bid to assistance it pull much capital. The institution has since gone connected to rise astatine slightest $1.4 billion, including backing from Bezos’ household office, successful an effort to physique an ultra-low-cost, bare-bones pickup that tin beryllium customized to a customer’s liking.