Bob McGrew's AI Manufacturing Startup Arda Raises $230M at $1.5B Led by Altimeter, Accel and Khosla

Arda, founded by former OpenAI research chief Bob McGrew with ex-Adept and ex-Palantir co-founders, raised $230M at a $1.5B valuation led by Altimeter, Accel and Khosla to automate assembly-line programming. McGrew likens it to 'Claude or Cursor for manufacturing engineers,' citing a 3-6 month retooling cycle today. Anduril is already running Arda's AI models, and the round roughly triples a $70M target from March.