Forgepoint raises $9.8M seed for an AI rep that quotes for factories

Forgepoint raises $9.8M seed for an AI rep that quotes for factories

14 October 2026: Forgepoint, a New York company that sells an AI inside sales representative to manufacturers, has raised a seed round of $9.8 million, the company says. Primary Venture Partners and a16z speedrun led it, with angel investors from OpenAI, Brex, Vercel and SoFi. The money will take the product to more manufacturers, deepen its integrations with their business systems and grow the team.

Not yet independently verified. The round appears on the company press release carried by GlobeNewswire, and no copy is on the company's own site. Revenue and quote-time figures are company claims; a Spanish report gives a different revenue timeframe and a figure not in the release. We will update this when it can be confirmed, and remove this note.

An agent that answers the quote request

The product is called Frank. When a buyer emails a request for quote, Frank reads the message and its attachments, flags requirements that are missing and asks the buyer for them. It prices the job from the manufacturer's own cost model, sends the draft to a person for review, then sends the quote, follows up and records the correspondence. Each customer gets an email address on its own domain, so buyers deal with what looks like a member of the sales team.

Customers named by sector include a metal service centre and a foundry, and the company lists injection moulding, automation, fabrication, stamping and machining among the shops it serves.

The people behind it

Jack Strauss is chief executive. His background includes Bain's advanced manufacturing practice and the aviation startup Xwing. Alex Pareto is chief technology officer and was previously head of engineering for the spend management organisation at Brex. The founders toured Midwest plants in early 2025 before building the product.

What the company reports

Forgepoint says it reached seven-figure annual recurring revenue within six months of launch and that hundreds of engineers, estimators and sales reps use Frank every week. Its customers' monthly quote throughput is up by an average of 30 percent, and the time taken to produce a quote is down by more than 55 percent.

To explain the demand, the release cites a 2025 Gardner Intelligence study that found nearly half of manufacturers expect a vendor to respond within 24 hours.

Quotes from the release

Strauss said: "Speed is a competitive advantage, so we built Frank to keep jobs moving and free skilled operators to focus on the decisions only they can make."

Chas Aday, founder and chief revenue officer of SIP Manufacturing, a customer, described the review step: "Now, Frank drafts and I can approve it in two minutes."

Zach Fredericks, principal at Primary Venture Partners, said: "Forgepoint is giving those teams more capacity, starting with quoting."

Beyond quoting

The company says it intends to extend Frank to other back-office departments in manufacturing. Ecosistema Startup, which reported the round on 17 October, writes that revenue passed one million dollars in under a year and that the agent has processed requests worth over four billion dollars. The release does not state the second figure.

Company profile on TrustList: Forgepoint

Sources

• Forgepoint (via GlobeNewswire): Forgepoint raises $9.8M to help manufacturers quote faster and win more business, 14 October 2026
• Forgepoint company site (read 2026-10-17), 17 October 2026
• Ecosistema Startup: Forgepoint, IA para fabricas, 17 October 2026