Benny Buller & Alex Huckstepp
Uptool is on a mission to accelerate the speed and productivity of U.S. manufacturers. Its first product — an AI-powered quoting engine — eliminates the operational bottlenecks holding back small, high-mix machine shops, fabrication shops, and the hundreds of thousands of SMB manufacturers that form the backbone of America's industrial supply chain.
Founded in 2024 in San Mateo, California, Uptool has raised $6M in seed funding from Eclipse, Khosla Ventures, Bessemer Venture Partners, and Kleiner Perkins.
Founders Buller and Alex Huckstepp bring nearly 50 years of combined manufacturing and technology experience, built at companies like Velo3D, Applied Materials, and Carbon. Having spent their careers embedded with manufacturers, they saw firsthand the chronic friction that limits production capacity: Lack of responsiveness and visibility, slow quoting, bottlenecked resources, underutilized equipment, and a shrinking skilled workforce. They founded Uptool to remove those barriers and strengthen the competitive edge that domestic manufacturers provide to U.S. innovation.
“AI allowed us to reimagine how software can serve the hundreds of thousands of small U.S. manufacturers left behind by modern enterprise software. We are building an AI platform to boost the speed and productivity of SMB manufacturers.”
Co-Founder and CEO, Uptool
Benny Buller