TechCrunch has exclusively learned that Adam, a standout viral startup from Y Combinator’s Winter 2025 cohort, has secured $4.1 million in seed funding to fuel its upcoming endeavors.
The AI startup garnered substantial investor interest after its text-to-3D model app generated over 10 million impressions on social media after its release.
According to CEO Zach Dive (pictured on the right), “We received term sheets via email without needing to schedule meetings.”
Adam swiftly chose TQ Ventures as its primary investor because of their shared vision for the future of computer-aided design (CAD). Crucially, they also aligned with Adam’s strategy of prioritizing consumers before entering the enterprise market.
This alignment was critical: Adam initially gained traction with a consumer-facing product, not an enterprise solution. Dive emphasized that this decision is proving beneficial, setting the stage for Adam’s forthcoming copilot for professional CAD workflows.
The startup’s initial strategy involved a B2B approach, but they believed the technology wasn’t mature enough for enterprise use, leading them to initially target makers instead of engineers. However, AI models advanced more rapidly than anticipated, and Dive now anticipates launching their copilot before year’s end.
Their initial tool enables creators without CAD expertise to produce 3D models using text prompts, but initial feedback indicated that text isn’t always the optimal method for interacting with 3D, according to Dive. “Therefore, for our copilot, we integrated different interaction methods, such as allowing users to select specific sections of the 3D object and communicate with it.”
This will provide the startup with a unique selling point in comparison to other text-to-CAD offerings, even though the ‘AI copilot for CAD’ market already has competitors. For example, MecAgent is currently available, but Adam could leverage its successful launch.
Dive noted that early momentum was particularly advantageous for hiring, which is still ongoing. He and his co-founder, Adam CPO Aaron Li, are both graduates of UC Berkeley’s Master of Design program, but the startup also requires additional AI and engineering talent to “provide models with the appropriate spatial reasoning context.”
Funding and support can both assist in this effort, and Adam now has plenty of both, sometimes in combination. Besides TQ and participating funds like 468 Capital, Pioneer, Script Capital, and Transpose Platform, Adam also has the backing of angel investors, including Tim Glaser (Posthog), Trevor Blackwell (YC), and Theo Browne (T3 Chat).
Additionally, Vercel founder Guillermo Rauch referred to Adam as “the v0 of CAD” (alluding to Vercel’s V0, an AI-driven platform for web creation).
He posted on X that “It’s easier, quicker, and attracts a wider audience.”
Adam is well on its way to reaching a broad audience, with “tens of thousands of individual users and a growing customer base” for its standard and pro subscriptions, which start at $5.99 and $17.99 per month, respectively. Dive stated that the startup has not yet started monetizing its soon-to-be-released enterprise product, but has “testers validating different features.”
This testing stage is obviously essential: there is a significant difference between assisting amateurs in printing 3D Pikachus and assisting engineers with their everyday tasks. Dive clarified that the startup aims to streamline time-intensive activities like applying the same modification to numerous CAD files rather than replace them.
The startup, initially focused on mechanical engineering, intends to assist these professional users in producing feature-rich parametric designs in widely used CAD applications, starting with Onshape, which is well-known for bringing CAD to the cloud and changing workflows. Dive predicted, “AI will have the same effect.”
