Today's Manufacturing Pulse
Jeff Bezos' Prometheus secures $12B Series B to accelerate physical AI for manufacturing
Jeff Bezos' AI startup Prometheus, focused on physical AI for engineering and manufacturing, closed a $12 billion Series B round in June 2026. The financing lifted its valuation to $41 billion and brought total capital raised to about $18.2 billion.
Also developing:
By the numbers: Park Systems raises $72M strategic financing via perpetual bonds
What a Year of Trump 2.0 Has Taught Us About the Global Economy
In his second term, President Donald Trump pushed average U.S. import tariffs to about 18%, the highest level since the Great Depression. The higher duties widened the trade deficit and contributed to persistent inflation, prompting the Federal Reserve to cut rates three times in 2025 despite price pressures. While consumer spending and AI‑driven investment helped the stock market rebound after a Q1 contraction, the labor market weakened, with unemployment climbing above 4.6%. Partial reversals of tariffs on coffee, autos and electronics have softened some impacts but have not eliminated the underlying risks.
Crease, Fold, Transform. - Alfonso Parra Rubio - MIT
In this talk, Alfonso Parra Rubio examines how folding—mirroring natural processes—serves as a versatile engineering tool that reshapes materials without altering their intrinsic properties. He showcases examples ranging from millimeter‑scale cellular lattices to meter‑scale corrugated structures and robotic actuators, culminating...
Super-Modular Chiral Origami Metamaterials
In this talk, Tuo Zhao from Princeton presents his latest work on super-modular chiral origami metamaterials, which combine auxetic planar tessellations with Kresling‑style origami columns to achieve decoupled, large‑strain actuation. The assembly can twist up to 90°, contract in‑plane by...
Greener by Every Fold. Strength in Every Curve.
In this CDFAM symposium talk, Julia Hannu of STILFOLD presents the company’s origami‑inspired manufacturing process that folds metal sheets using both straight and curved creases to create structural parts. She explains how the digital design tools and algorithms they’ve built...
Conformal Lattice Design Made Easy: A CAD-Integrated Approach - Tetmet
In this symposium talk, Rachel Azulay of TETMET presents a CAD‑integrated workflow for creating conformal lattice structures at large scale. She explains how traditional lattice tools fall short for high‑performance, manufacturable designs and demonstrates how embedding lattice generation directly into...
Computational Design for Assembly: Automating Design Workflows for 3D Concrete Printed Staircases
The episode explores Scawo3D’s Selective Paste Intrusion (SPI) 3D concrete printing method for freeform reinforced concrete staircases and the computational workflow that makes it scalable. Presenters Philip Schneider and Timo Harboe Zollner explain how traditional formwork is labor‑intensive and how...
From Photo Film Maker To Biopharma Giant
Fujifilm Biotechnologies, a subsidiary of the historic photo‑film maker, opened a 150‑acre, commercial‑scale biopharma manufacturing campus in Holly Springs, North Carolina, investing over $3.2 billion. The first phase features eight 20,000‑liter mammalian cell‑culture bioreactors, with a second phase slated to double...
The US Is a Small Country
The article revisits the classic small‑country tariff model, contrasting it with the large‑country framework that allows an importer to affect world prices. It explains how a sufficiently small tariff could improve a large importer’s terms of trade, creating an "optimal...
The 2026 Material Handling Marketing Report: Why Thought Leadership Is King
In this episode, Kevin and Ashton Maxfield dissect the 2026 Material Handling Marketing Report, which reveals that 45% of industry professionals rank Thought Leadership and Content as their top marketing priority. They explain how traditional sales tactics—like spec sheets and...