Start-up Backflip has announced its first product, an AI-powered design platform that translates user inputs into high resolution, 3D-printable models.
The company says that users can produce real parts from a simple text description, or even by snapping a photo of something that broke and needs to be replaced.
Founded by CEO Greg Mark and CTO David Benhaim — the founding team behind 3D printing company Markforged – it has been joined by a team of AI researchers from MIT to build the ultimate design tool for creating real things.
“We’re building a next-generation design tool that allows a small team to move with the velocity of the biggest engineering army in the world. This is a giant leap forward in bringing design and manufacturing back to the US,” said Mark.
“Today we’re releasing our first foundation model — it’s an onramp to 3D design. We’ve enabled a series of inputs — from text, to drawing, to snapping a photo with your phone — that get converted into a 3D model you can 3D print today, and use in the real world. It’s so easy, a child can do it.
“The next release will add precision and control for experienced engineers and designers. It’s the start of the professional tool we always wanted.”
Benhaim, added: “AI language models capture how we think, vision models capture how we see, and Backflip is creating foundation models that capture how we build.
“We’ve invented a novel neural representation that teaches AI to think in 3D, unlocking a new category of models. That development yields 60x more efficient training, 10x faster inference and 100x the spatial resolution of existing state of the art methods. Our series of 3D foundation models will form the kernel for building the real world.”
Backed By $30M from NEA and Andreessen Horowitz, its Angel investors include CTO of Microsoft and co-founder of LinkedIn Kevin Scott and Android founder and AI futurist Rich Miner.
