Uptool Emerges from Stealth

February 11, 2026 by Joris Peels 3D Printing 3D Software Business Editorials / Opinions Featured Stories

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Uptool has come out of stealth mode. The company has raised $6 million from prominent investors and hopes to become an indispensable tool for manufacturing. For now uptool is providing quoting software for small to medium manufacturing services.

By creating faster workflow software that automates calculations that have to be done by people, the company hopes to make small businesses more efficient. Small businesses are often bogged down by a lack of people, a few key people being nodes where a lot of processes come together, and lots of stupid work like responding to RFQ´s again and again. The small and versatile small business often struggles to cope with being overloaded or repetitive, tedious workflows. If those workflows also have to be carried out by your key finance person, Tom, or your CEO, Jane, and only they, critical people can be kept from sales, improving the business, and interacting with customers. Instead, they are bogged down by invoicing, filling out forms, or other rote work. This is painful for them and the business. Not only is it annoying, but it is also making a flexible firm less flexible and less able to improve itself.

Based in San Mateo and founded in 2024, Uptool has raised $6 million from notable VC’s Eclipse, Kleiner Perkins, Bessemer, and Khosla Ventures. The founder of Uptool is Velo3D founder Benny Buller, who said,

“We are building an AI platform to boost their business and bring their entire operations into the modern era. It’s been incredibly rewarding to see our initial customers rapidly grow their sales and free them from their desks so they can spend more time with their customers or on the shop floor manufacturing parts.”

The company gives people a tool that they can sign up for and reportedly set up in an hour. Quoting, revisions, and communications are available through dashboards with AI tools organizing CAD and other files, BOMs, and other key bits of data. At the same time, calculation tools are supposed to make quoting easier.

Velocity CNC CEO Nathan Dillon noted,

“I would spend hours a day quoting — time we don’t charge for, Uptool has enabled me to cut my quoting time 10x in 2025, contributing to my biggest sales year to date – more than double the previous year.”

The other founder is Alex Huckstepp, previously of Machina Labs, Arris, Digital Alloys, and Carbon.

Eclipse partner Charly Mwangi explained,

“Nearly 98% of U.S. manufacturing firms are SMBs — representing over 40% of the industrial workforce — but their capacity is fragmented and largely invisible, Uptool digitizes this long tail of manufacturers, injecting speed and transparency into the supply chain. That’s the only way reindustrialization actually scales.”

An AI-powered Salesforce, but for manufacturing, sounds like a tempting play. There is real pain, waste, and annoyance at small firms around quoting and communication management. Often, many RFPs/RFQs receive fewer responses than they should, and firms are often unable to quote on or respond to all opportunities. By making CEOs themselves more efficient and lightening their workload, the firm places itself closer to money and the decision maker. Paul will decide if he wants to pay this fee. If Paul’s workload decreases, he decides to purchase the tool and picks up the phone when someone calls. This means that Uptool’s uptake could be quick. The tool could also be highly cost-effective since it is meant to be a bridgehead to more complex value-added products that will connect the client to more tools.

The company can afford to be a great tool at low cost as long as it becomes the connective tissue for machine shops and manufacturers. Once it is, it can become very sticky and difficult to dislodge. Then it can slowly offer more sophisticated tools at higher rates and make a mint. It’s beautiful, a great play. I really hope that this tool goes on to make it easier for small manufacturers to become more efficient and win.