Dulo, a San Francisco startup co-founded by Sebastian Thrun to build foundation models for hardware design, has raised a $130 million seed round, The Information reported Oct. 29, 2026. Co-founder Adrian Aoun confirmed the round the same day on X.
No lead investor or valuation has been disclosed.
The size is striking for a seed round, the earliest stage of institutional funding, and it arrives as a cluster of well-funded companies converge on AI-driven engineering design. Dulo's website puts its pitch plainly: "Manufacturing at lightspeed. Foundation models for hardware design."
Who invested
The Information reported that Eric Schmidt and John Doerr, chairman of Kleiner Perkins, took part, according to a Dealroom news note. Dealroom also listed DST Global, Construct Capital and Lowercarbon Capital.
Aoun, for his part, seemed happy to be scooped. "Props to The Information for scooping our $130m seed round — we appreciate the support from @Benioff, @johndoerr, @ericschmidt, @yurimilner_ … and many others," he wrote on X.
His post went on to thank Ram Shriram; Rachel Holt of Construct Capital; Chris Sacca and Clay Dumas of Lowercarbon; Ben Ling of Bling Capital; David Tisch of BoxGroup; Topher Conway of SV Angel; Katie Haun of Haun Ventures; and Kevin Weil and Elizabeth Weil of Scribble Ventures.
None of the sources reviewed identified a formal lead investor as of Oct. 30, 2026. Aoun thanked Doerr personally rather than Kleiner Perkins as a firm. A search for an SEC Form D filing by Dulo, the notice companies typically file after selling securities privately, turned up nothing as of that date, though a missing filing does not mean the round failed to close.
What Dulo is building
"Earlier this year Sebastian Thrun and I co-founded Dulo on a mission to create an Engineering Superintelligence, building foundation models for hardware design," Aoun wrote on X on Oct. 29, 2026.
The Information described the company as developing AI models to automate engineering design. A Dealroom note put the scope at design and validation, with examples that include specifying constraints and generating a valid design, and framed the product as a design layer rather than hardware manufacturing.
Beyond that, little is public. Dulo has named no customers or pilots, and it has disclosed no revenue or product documentation. Its Stanford-hosted landing page reads "Coming soon" and says the company was "Built by leaders from Waymo, Google Brain, and SAIL."
The team
Thrun founded Google X, led the early Google self-driving project that became Waymo, co-founded Google Brain and previously directed the Stanford AI Lab, according to Wikipedia. The Information reported that Carl Bass, the former Autodesk chief executive, is an advisor.
Aoun co-founded Torch, an AI health app that OpenAI agreed to buy for about $100 million in equity, The Information reported Jan. 12, 2026. He is also associated with Foundational, which works on automated factories, and Seneca, which makes firefighting drones.
Serafim Batzoglou, a former Stanford professor and DNAnexus co-founder, posted on X that he joined as chief technology officer and co-founder. Press coverage has not confirmed that. RecentFunding, a funding tracker, lists Dulo at 11 to 50 employees, an unofficial estimate.
A crowded field
Dulo is not alone in chasing physical engineering with AI. TechCrunch reported June 11, 2026 that Jeff Bezos's Prometheus raised $12 billion at a reported $41 billion valuation to build an "artificial general engineer." The Information reported in October that Larry Page has a stealth effort, Dynatomics, that uses large language models to design aircraft and other physical systems.
Vinci, which builds physics AI for engineering simulation, raised a $250 million Series B at a $1.5 billion valuation in early October 2026, Reuters reported. Circuit Mind, which makes AI for electronics design, announced $25 million on Oct. 28, 2026. Established software makers including Synopsys, Ansys, Siemens and Cadence are adding AI to their own tools, according to Dealroom.
What's next
Dulo did not say how it will spend the money. The company first surfaced publicly after Thrun's keynote at the Actuate 26 conference in San Francisco on Aug. 18-19, 2026, when posts linked him to a stealth robotics effort called Dulo. Its website still says "Coming soon."
