2026-09-10 — Nimble Ventures leads the Series B extension for the London company, with Lockheed Martin's venture arm among the backers.
CloudNC, a London company founded in 2015, announced a $20 million round on 9 September 2026, reported as €17.2 million. Nimble Ventures, a US firm, led it. Calculus Venture Capital, Entrepreneur First and Lockheed Martin Ventures, the venture arm of the defence group, also took part. TechCrunch describes the round as a Series B extension and puts total capital raised to date at $128 million. The company was founded by Theo Saville, chief executive, and Chris Emery, chief science officer.
The shipping product is CAM Assist, which uses AI to generate machining strategies and toolpaths for computer numerical control equipment, work that a skilled programmer would otherwise do by hand. The company reports more than 1,000 machine shops using it worldwide, with Lockheed Martin and Major Tool and Machine among named customers. TechCrunch puts the team at around 80 people and 80 per cent of the customer base in the United States.
A second product, Quote Agent, is due later in 2026. It applies the same approach to job assessment and quote preparation, the step where a shop decides what a part will cost and what could go wrong before it commits. Quoting is a bottleneck that sits before any metal is cut, and it is done by the same scarce senior people who do the programming.
“Machine shops everywhere are under pressure to quote and program faster, and deliver more with the people and machines they already have,” said Saville. The constraint the company is selling against is labour rather than capital equipment, and the investor mix is worth reading on its own terms: a defence prime putting venture money into the software layer of its own supplier base says something about how Western manufacturers now view machining capacity.
Why it matters for AgTech founders: almost every ag hardware company depends on exactly these shops. Implements, seeders, robot chassis, sensor housings and gearbox parts at pilot volumes are made by contract machinists, not in-house, and the schedule risk is rarely the machining itself. It is the two weeks waiting for a quote and the queue behind a programmer. Three things follow. One, treat shop quoting turnaround as a design input, not a procurement detail, because it sets your iteration loop more than your CAD does. Two, this is a product sold into a labour constraint on equipment the customer already owns, which is why it can reach a thousand sites without shipping hardware, and the same logic applies to a lot of ag software aimed at contractors and co-ops. Three, if your parts are hard to quote, they are expensive before anyone machines them, so design for quotability early. Ag founders should also note who is funding supply-chain software now, because the same defence and industrial money is starting to look at food security infrastructure on the same reasoning.
CloudNC raises $20m to put AI into CNC programming and quoting
Nimble Ventures leads the Series B extension for the London company, with Lockheed Martin's venture arm among the backers.
CloudNC, a London company founded in 2015, announced a $20 million round on 9 September 2026, reported as €17.2 million. Nimble Ventures, a US firm, led it. Calculus Venture Capital, Entrepreneur First and Lockheed Martin Ventures, the venture arm of the defence group, also took part. TechCrunch describes the round as a Series B extension and puts total capital raised to date at $128 million. The company was founded by Theo Saville, chief executive, and Chris Emery, chief science officer.
The shipping product is CAM Assist, which uses AI to generate machining strategies and toolpaths for computer numerical control equipment, work that a skilled programmer would otherwise do by hand. The company reports more than 1,000 machine shops using it worldwide, with Lockheed Martin and Major Tool and Machine among named customers. TechCrunch puts the team at around 80 people and 80 per cent of the customer base in the United States.
A second product, Quote Agent, is due later in 2026. It applies the same approach to job assessment and quote preparation, the step where a shop decides what a part will cost and what could go wrong before it commits. Quoting is a bottleneck that sits before any metal is cut, and it is done by the same scarce senior people who do the programming.
“Machine shops everywhere are under pressure to quote and program faster, and deliver more with the people and machines they already have,” said Saville. The constraint the company is selling against is labour rather than capital equipment, and the investor mix is worth reading on its own terms: a defence prime putting venture money into the software layer of its own supplier base says something about how Western manufacturers now view machining capacity.
Why it matters for AgTech founders: almost every ag hardware company depends on exactly these shops. Implements, seeders, robot chassis, sensor housings and gearbox parts at pilot volumes are made by contract machinists, not in-house, and the schedule risk is rarely the machining itself. It is the two weeks waiting for a quote and the queue behind a programmer. Three things follow. One, treat shop quoting turnaround as a design input, not a procurement detail, because it sets your iteration loop more than your CAD does. Two, this is a product sold into a labour constraint on equipment the customer already owns, which is why it can reach a thousand sites without shipping hardware, and the same logic applies to a lot of ag software aimed at contractors and co-ops. Three, if your parts are hard to quote, they are expensive before anyone machines them, so design for quotability early. Ag founders should also note who is funding supply-chain software now, because the same defence and industrial money is starting to look at food security infrastructure on the same reasoning.
