The factories that build modern hardware are drowning in planning work, and CloudNC has raised $20 million to automate the worst of it. The London-based company, which provides AI-driven process planning and quoting software for CNC machining, will use the new capital to attack what its customers describe as the most persistent bottleneck in precision manufacturing: turning a 3D model into an executable, optimized production plan.
Behind the jargon lies a genuine crisis. Skilled CAM programmers — the engineers who translate part geometry into toolpaths, fixtures, and machine instructions — are in severe shortage across Europe and North America, and their work is slow, manual, and inconsistent. Quotes that should take hours take days; factories reject business they cannot cost quickly; and experienced programmers retire faster than schools replace them. CloudNC's platform automates much of that translation, generating process plans and cost estimates in a fraction of the traditional time while keeping human engineers in the loop for final approval.
The funding arrives as reshoring, defense rearmament, and aerospace order books collide with hard capacity limits. Western governments desperate to rebuild industrial bases are discovering that machine tools are useless without the digital planning layer that makes them productive. Investors see a wedge into the factory floor from an unlikely direction — not robots, but software that removes the cognitive load of manufacturing. With the round, CloudNC plans to expand into adjacent processes such as additive and composites, deepen ERP integrations, and scale its North American presence where defense demand is hottest.
