London-based CloudNC has raised $20m (about £15m) in new investment capital led by US firm Nimble Ventures, with Lockheed Martin's corporate venture fund LM Ventures, Calculus Venture Capital and Entrepreneur First all taking part. Neither the round stage nor a valuation was disclosed.
CloudNC sells software that automates computer numerical control machining, the process by which a computer programme drives factory tools to cut metal parts to tolerance. Its lead product, CAM Assist, applies artificial intelligence to the generation of machining strategies and toolpaths, work that has traditionally consumed hours of a skilled programmer's time for every component.
The company says the software is now used by more than 1,000 machine shops worldwide, several hundred of them in the United States. Named customers include Lockheed Martin and American contract manufacturer Major Tool and Machine.
On the deal itself, the disclosure is thin. Nimble Ventures, founded by investor John Burbank, leads. Calculus Venture Capital, Entrepreneur First and LM Ventures participate. CloudNC did not label the round by stage, did not publish a post-money valuation, and did not set out how the new money sits alongside earlier investors on the register.
The presence of LM Ventures is the more instructive line item. Lockheed Martin is simultaneously a customer and, through its venture arm, now a shareholder — an alignment that matters in defence-adjacent manufacturing, where supplier lock-in is measured in programme lifetimes rather than contract years.
Chief executive and co-founder Theo Saville framed the raise around throughput rather than headcount. "Machine shops everywhere are under pressure to quote and program faster, and deliver more with the people and machines they already have," he said, adding that the investment would go towards making CAM Assist more effective, expanding into more markets and building new products.
Burbank pitched the thesis in industrial-policy terms. "CloudNC's automation of CNC will enable massive increases in onshoring of manufacturing and global production of mission-critical components," he said.
The capital is earmarked for two things. The first is commercial scale: go-to-market operations, customer support and partner activity in faster-growing markets, as the company moves CAM Assist beyond early adopters. The second is product. CloudNC is building Quote Agent, an AI tool for quoting and estimating due later in 2026, which targets the administrative bottleneck at the front of a machine shop's workflow rather than the programming bottleneck in the middle of it.
The company is also working with Knox Systems towards FedRAMP certification for CAM Assist, the US federal authorisation that would clear the software for use by government agencies and defence contractors handling sensitive workloads. That is a slow, expensive process, and one that only makes sense if the American revenue base is expected to carry it.
Original source: Tech.eu — https://tech.eu/2026/09/09/cloudnc-lands-20m-to-expand-its-ai-software-for-precision-manufacturing/
