Dulo, a San Francisco startup co-founded by Sebastian Thrun to build foundation models for hardware design, has raised a $130 million seed round, The Information reported Oct. 29, 2026. Co-founder Adrian Aoun confirmed the round the same day on X.
No lead investor or valuation has been disclosed.
The size is striking for a seed round, the earliest stage of institutional funding, and it arrives as a cluster of well-funded companies converge on AI-driven engineering design. Dulo's website puts its pitch plainly: "Manufacturing at lightspeed. Foundation models for hardware design."
Who invested
The Information reported that Eric Schmidt and John Doerr, chairman of Kleiner Perkins, took part, according to a Dealroom news note. Dealroom also listed DST Global, Construct Capital and Lowercarbon Capital.
Aoun, for his part, seemed happy to be scooped. "Props to The Information for scooping our $130m seed round — we appreciate the support from @Benioff, @johndoerr, @ericschmidt, @yurimilner_ … and many others," he wrote on X.
His post went on to thank Ram Shriram; Rachel Holt of Construct Capital; Chris Sacca and Clay Dumas of Lowercarbon; Ben Ling of Bling Capital; David Tisch of BoxGroup; Topher Conway of SV Angel; Katie Haun of Haun Ventures; and Kevin Weil and Elizabeth Weil of Scribble Ventures.
None of the sources reviewed identified a formal lead investor as of Oct. 30, 2026. Aoun thanked Doerr personally rather than Kleiner Perkins as a firm. A search for an SEC Form D filing by Dulo, the notice companies typically file after selling securities privately, turned up nothing as of that date, though a missing filing does not mean the round failed to close.
What Dulo is building
"Earlier this year Sebastian Thrun and I co-founded Dulo on a mission to create an Engineering Superintelligence, building foundation models for hardware design," Aoun wrote on X on Oct. 29, 2026.
The Information described the company as developing AI models to automate engineering design. A Dealroom note put the scope at design and validation, with examples that include specifying constraints and generating a valid design, and framed the product as a design layer rather than hardware manufacturing.
