We Raised $7 Million to Build the Software Layer for the Modern Factory

By Skyler Salman, Co-Founder & CEO, PreScalar

Today, we're excited to announce that PreScalar has raised $7 million in Seed funding, co-led by Dynamo Ventures and BMW i Ventures, with participation from Blue Wire Capital, Uplift Ventures, and Antler.

We're building the software and testing infrastructure for the modern factory, making it easier for manufacturers to test hardware, deploy firmware, and track every device as it moves through production.

This is a problem my co-founders, John Cathcart and Ben Fredrickson, and I know firsthand. Between us, we've spent years building and launching complex hardware products at companies like Cruise, Rivian, Waymo, Google, Lucid, and Chrysler. We've worked on factory floors, managed production testing, shipped safety-critical software, and built the internal systems required to bring sophisticated hardware products to market.

And we kept running into the same problem. The products we were building were becoming more advanced, but the infrastructure used to manufacture them wasn't keeping up. Think about how much software now exists inside a car, robot, or industrial device.

These products aren't simply manufactured, shipped, and forgotten. Their software changes. Firmware gets updated. New features are introduced. Bugs need to be fixed. And manufacturers need to know exactly what's running on every device.

But much of the factory infrastructure supporting these products was designed for a different era. Here's a simple example. Imagine a manufacturer has 10,000 components sitting in inventory. An engineering team discovers a firmware issue and releases an update.

In an ideal world, the manufacturer could identify which components need the update, deploy the new firmware, test each device, and maintain a complete record of what changed In reality, that process can involve manually reprogramming components, tracking information across disconnected systems, or even shipping parts back to the manufacturer.

Multiply that across thousands of devices, multiple production lines, and suppliers around the world, and the problem becomes enormous.

We've made incredible progress in the software inside physical products. Now we need to bring that same level of sophistication to the factories building them.

Why we built PreScalar

At the world's most advanced hardware companies, engineering teams have spent years building their own infrastructure to solve these problems. We've been part of those teams. We know how much time, money, and engineering effort go into developing custom test equipment, firmware deployment systems, and tools to collect production data.

But every manufacturer shouldn't have to build that infrastructure from scratch. That's why we started PreScalar in 2025.

Our goal is simple: Give manufacturers the infrastructure they need to build increasingly complex, software-defined products without having to develop it themselves. PreScalar combines modular test hardware with software that connects production testing, firmware management, and data collection.

A manufacturer can start with a single test station and expand across an entire production line. As more stations are connected, the data becomes part of a unified system, providing greater visibility into each device throughout production. Instead of relying on disconnected tools and manual processes, engineering and manufacturing teams can work from the same information.

And when something changes, they have a better way to understand what happened, which devices were affected, and what needs to happen next.

The factory is becoming a software problem

The shift toward software-defined hardware is happening across nearly every industry we care about, from automotive and autonomous vehicles to robotics, consumer electronics, and defense.

The global automotive software and electronics market alone is projected to reach $519 billion by 2035. But there's a fundamental disconnect. Manufacturers are investing heavily in making products smarter, while the infrastructure used to build and test those products often remains fragmented.

We believe that's going to change.

Just as software transformed how engineers design products, it's going to transform how those products are manufactured, tested, updated, and tracked. The factory of the future won't just manufacture hardware. It will need to manage the software running on every product it builds.

That's the infrastructure we're building at PreScalar.

We're already working with manufacturers ranging from high-growth technology companies to large-scale global manufacturers, helping them automate production testing and simplify how software is deployed on the factory floor.

With this funding, we'll be expanding our R&D and hardware manufacturing capabilities, growing our team, and bringing PreScalar to more production environments. We're grateful to Dynamo Ventures, BMW i Ventures, Blue Wire Capital, Uplift Ventures, and Antler for believing in our vision.

Most importantly, we're grateful to the engineering and manufacturing teams who have trusted us to help solve problems we know are anything but simple. We're still early, but we believe the opportunity ahead is significant.

The next generation of physical products will be defined as much by their software as their hardware. The factories building them need infrastructure designed for that reality.

We're building that infrastructure.

If you're building complex hardware and dealing with these challenges, we'd love to hear from you.

— Skyler, John, and Ben