American manufacturing faces a critical knowledge crisis as factories return home through reshoring efforts. While the U.S. produces just 1.5 submarines per year, China manufactures over 10 monthly, highlighting the urgent need to modernize production processes that still rely on printed PDFs, outdated SOPs, and tribal knowledge locked in retiring technicians’ heads. Dirac addresses this challenge with BuildOS, an AI-powered platform that automatically generates high-quality, animated, interactive work instructions for complex mechanical assemblies directly from CAD files. The platform reduces work instruction creation time from weeks or months to hours or minutes, while preserving critical process knowledge in structured, reusable formats that bridge the gap between engineering design and manufacturing execution. With early aerospace wins including Ancra Aircraft achieving 95% time savings and a strategic partnership with Siemens, Dirac is building the operational backbone needed to make American reshoring successful.
AlleyWatch sat down with Dirac CEO and Cofounder Fil Aronshtein to learn more about the business, its future plans, recent funding round, and much, much more…
Who were your investors and how much did you raise?
Dirac raised $10.7M Seed from Founders Fund and Coatue.
Tell us about the product or service that Dirac offers.
Dirac offers BuildOS, an AI-powered platform that automatically generates high-quality, animated, interactive work instructions for complex mechanical assemblies:
Engineers upload CAD files, and BuildOS suggests an assembly sequence and produces 3D animations. Tasks that historically take weeks or months now take hours or minutes to complete.
The tool allows adjustments, such as reordering steps or defining subassemblies, and the visuals update automatically.
BuildOS helps preserve tribal knowledge; including tools, torque specs, and checks; in structured and reusable form.
BuildOS runs natively on the shop floor, making instructions clearer and always up to date.
What inspired the start of Dirac?
We built a team of individuals with rich hardware backgrounds from industry, manufacturing planes, cars, and submarines, as we saw firsthand how archaic and manual the manufacturing documentation process was. Drawing from my time at Northrop Grumman, I was motivated by my first-hand experience with the legacy infrastructure and workflows in production that needed to be modernized. Building work instructions are typically done via manual screenshots and PowerPoint decks, a painfully manual and error-prone process. Our team’s vision is to “bring reality back to mechanical design” by reconnecting CAD with real-world production, thus “reuniting the blueprint” and bringing manufacturing back to the West.
How is Dirac different?
We have a few key differentiators:
The team is fully in-person in the Empire State Building.
AI-driven automation of work instruction creation, replacing tedious manual documentation.
Integrated 3D animations and interactive visuals, not just static documents.
Adaptive interface: engineers can tweak sequences, and the system auto-updates visuals.
Bridging design and manufacturing, closing the feedback loop and retaining operational knowledge.
Targeting high-complexity customer sectors, with trusted names in defense, aerospace, automotive, etc.
What market does Dirac target and how big is it?
Dirac targets industries involving complex mechanical assembly: aerospace, defense, automotive OEMs, agriculture machinery, construction equipment, and more. The TAM is everything that is assembled.
There are the same number of manufacturing engineers as there are mechanical engineers, so a good benchmark is the entire CAD market, so ~$20B market.
What’s your business model?
SaaS subscription model targeted at manufacturers: licensing BuildOS per seat, site, or assembly line. There’s also a strategic component: integration partnerships like the one with Siemens Teamcenter, potentially opening OEM and enterprise-level deployment channels.
How are you preparing for a potential economic slowdown?
The market for manufacturing in the US is only just now ramping up. We have been focused on tight cost controls and operational efficiency. Deepening automation adoption is selling itself as a cost-saving necessity.
What was the funding process like?
Trae Stephens at Founders Fund and Thomas Laffont at Coatue have been incredible supporters from the beginning. We’re extraordinarily fortunate to be supported by investors who are aligned with our vision of changing the way global manufacturers build, and believe that Dirac will be one of the key contributors to America’s reshoring efforts.
What are the biggest challenges that you faced while raising capital?
Educating VCs on long sales cycles in industrial sectors, which Founders Fund and Coatue deeply understood. Establishing credibility vs. entrenched manual practices, which our partnership with Siemens helped us establish.
What factors about your business led your investors to write the check?Investors like Founders Fund and Coatue cited:
The urgency of US reindustrialization, and Dirac’s solution as a force multiplier for manufacturing efficiency.
The growing movement toward automation to build “cost-consistent” infrastructure.
Founders’ firsthand experience in both manufacturing and robotics gave confidence in their execution ability.
What are the milestones you plan to achieve in the next six months?
We have a very long product roadmap, with new features getting released every month. Deepening and expanding our integration with major market players. Scaling our engineering and go-to-market team to execute on exciting enterprise commercial opportunities with massive world-leading manufacturers.
What advice can you offer companies in New York that do not have a fresh injection of capital in the bank?
Focus very deeply on a core value proposition for one specific type of customer and radically enhance their quality of life.
Focus on monetization, efficiency, and tight burn management.
Pursue strategic partnerships to leverage distribution without heavy spend.
Lean into rising automation and AI cost-saving opportunities.
Where do you see the company going now over the near term?
Expanding enterprise adoption of BuildOS across high-complexity manufacturing sectors.
Cementing integration into engineering ecosystems via Siemens and other tools.
Scaling from a nascent team to a broader commercial operation.
What’s your favorite summer destination in and around the city?
Empire State Building (we love our office) and Jack Doyle’s for an after-work pub night.
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