YC alum Adam raises $4.1M to turn viral text-to-3D tool into AI copilot

Adam, 1 of the astir viral startups successful Y Combinator’s Winter 2025 batch, has raised a $4.1 cardinal effect circular to powerfulness its adjacent steps, TechCrunch learned exclusively.

After generating implicit 10 cardinal societal media impressions with the motorboat of its text-to-3D exemplary app, the AI startup had its prime of investors.

“We were getting word sheets implicit email without immoderate meetings,” said CEO Zach Dive (on the close of the picture).

Adam rapidly went with TQ Ventures arsenic its pb capitalist due to the fact that they agreed connected the aboriginal of computer-aided plan (CAD). Just arsenic importantly, they besides agreed connected Adam’s roadmap — going user first, and past to enterprise.

This required the astir alignment: Adam caught people’s attraction with a mainstream product, not an endeavor one. But Dive said this prime is paying off, and paving the mode for Adam’s upcoming copilot for professional-grade CAD workflows.

The startup had ever planned to spell B2B, but felt that the exertion wasn’t enterprise-ready yet — which is wherefore it initially focused connected makers, not engineers. But AI models improved faster than they expected, and Adam present plans to motorboat its copilot by the extremity of the year, Dive said.

Its archetypal instrumentality lets creators without CAD skills make 3D models from substance prompts, but aboriginal feedback showed that substance wasn’t ever the champion mode to interact with 3D, Dive said. “So for our copilot, we blended successful antithetic enactment paradigms; for example, users selecting antithetic parts of the 3D entity and conversing with it.” 

This volition springiness the startup an constituent of differentiation compared to other text-to-CAD products, though determination is already contention successful the ‘AI copilot for CAD’ conception arsenic well. MecAgent, for instance, is already available, but Adam could capitalize connected its viral launch.

Early momentum peculiarly helped with hiring, which is inactive an ongoing effort, Dive said. He and his cofounder, Adam CPO Aaron Li, some graduated from UC Berkeley’s Master of Design program, but the startup besides needs much AI and engineering endowment to “give models the close discourse for reasoning successful space.”

Capital and endorsements tin some assistance with this endeavor, and Adam present has its just stock of both, sometimes combined. Besides TQ and participating funds 468 Capital, Pioneer, Script Capital, and Transpose Platform, Adam is besides backed by angel investors, including Tim Glaser (Posthog), Trevor Blackwell (YC), and Theo Browne (T3 Chat).

In addition, Vercel laminitis Guillermo Rauch called Adam “the v0 of CAD” (in a motion to Vercel’s V0, an AI-powered level for web creation).

“It’s simpler, faster, and reaches a broader audience,” helium wrote connected X.

Adam is already connected its mode to reaching a wide audience, with “tens of thousands of idiosyncratic users and a increasing basal of paying customers” for its modular and pro plans, which respectively commencement astatine $5.99 and $17.99 per month. The startup hasn’t begun to monetize its soon-to-launch endeavor offering, but has “testers validating antithetic features,” Dive said.

This investigating signifier is intelligibly necessary: there’s rather a leap from helping amateurs people 3D Pikachus to supporting engineers successful their regular work. Dive said the startup doesn’t mean to regenerate them, but alternatively streamlines time-consuming tasks specified arsenic applying the aforesaid alteration to aggregate CAD files.

With an archetypal absorption connected mechanical engineering, the startup plans to assistance these pro users make feature‑rich parametric designs successful fashionable CAD programs, opening with Onshape, which is known for bringing CAD to the unreality and reshaping workflows. “The aforesaid happening volition beryllium existent with AI,” Dive predicted.