Foundation EGI, developer of what it describes as “the world’s first Engineering General Intelligence (EGI) platform”, has raised $23 million in oversubscribed Series A funding, raising over $30 million total.
The company is accelerating its vision of turning manufacturing’s biggest bottlenecks into breakthroughs using domain-specific AI.
The latest round was led by Translink Capital with participation from RRE Ventures, McRock Capital, Escape Investment Management (Jim Scapa), Fifth Growth Fund, and returning backers including E14 Fund, UNION, GRIDS Capital, and Henry Ford III.
Optimizing and reimagining engineering
Wojciech Matusik, PhD, co-founder and CSO of Foundation EGI and Professor of EECS and MechE at MIT, says: “We’re not just using AI to automate tasks. We’re building AI that knows when to break the rules.
“The biggest leaps in engineering haven’t come from following best practices. They came from challenging assumptions. Foundation EGI is designed to do exactly that.”
EGI combines purpose-built large language models with physics-based context and engineering best practices to tackle the complex nature of engineering, from design to manufacturing to documentation.
It transforms disorganized specifications, siloed tribal knowledge, and outdated instructions into succinct, structured, auditable, and human-/machine-executable workflows.
Mok Oh, PhD, co-founder and CEO of Foundation EGI, says: “The next industrial revolution will be AI-native. It begins by empowering engineers with AI tools that speak their language.
“From there, we move toward a future where humans and machines co-design with shared context and creativity.”
Built from research, for the real world
Foundation EGI was born from MIT’s cross-disciplinary research in AI for design and manufacturing, led by co-founders Matusik and Michael Foshey.
Their seminal paper, Large Language Models for Design and Manufacturing, was published in 2024 and has influenced a new wave of intelligent engineering tools.
Foundation EGI was founded to commercialize and power real-world AI applications for all manufacturing domains, including automotive, heavy industry, appliances, power tools, advanced manufacturing, and much more.
Toshi Otani, co-founder and managing director of Translink Capital, who led the Series A, says: “We are thrilled to invest in Foundation EGI to support their next phase of growth.
“We backed Foundation EGI because this is one of the rare teams that combines deep technical mastery in AI with firsthand knowledge of how design and manufacturing actually work.
“In addition, we believe that there is a great market opportunity that exists in Japan, Korea and Taiwan where we have a strong track record of supporting our portfolio companies.”
Vic Singh, general partner at RRE Ventures, says: “The best founders don’t just see around corners. They reshape the cornerstones of entire industries. When we met Mok, Wojciech and Mike we were immediately impressed with their market depth and technical acumen.
“Foundation EGI is building core infrastructure for the next generation of industrial AI – transforming manual processes that traditionally cost millions of dollars and countless hours of skilled labor into Engineering Intelligence – upending the space while giving engineers leverage to focus on the higher order work.”
Betting on Foundation EGI’s vision
Foundation EGI’s breakthrough approach to industrial AI is earning the confidence of some of the most respected voices in engineering and venture capital. As the company redefines what’s possible, its backers see more than potential. They see a turning point:
Jim Scapa, general partner of Escape Investment Management and founder and the former CEO of Altair Engineering, says: “The tools engineers have relied on for decades weren’t designed for the scale, speed, and complexity of the AI future.
“Foundation EGI is creating something fundamentally new – an intelligence layer that understands engineering itself. This isn’t just automation – it’s the beginning of a new way engineers think, create, and solve.”
Whitney Rockley, co-founder and managing partner of McRock Capital, says: “What excites me most about Foundation EGI is how human the technology feels.
“They’re not just chasing AI trends. They’re building tools that empower engineers to dream bigger, move faster, and stay in control of the creative process.”
The next frontier: Creative AI for engineering
In a TEDx talk earlier this year, Professor Matusik posed a provocative question: What if AI could help us ask better engineering questions, not just find better answers?
That spirit runs through the company’s product philosophy. Rather than just refining past patterns, Foundation EGI’s platform can challenge assumptions, explore novel design spaces, and guide engineers toward ideas that traditional tools would never surface.
Oh says: “Invention begins where convention ends. This is the kind of AI that helps you discover what the old tools told you wasn’t possible.”
