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Forgepoint raises $9.8M to help manufacturers quote faster and win more business. Forgepoint's AI Inside Sales Rep Frank helps manufacturers manage the entire RFQ-to-PO process using each shop's pricing rules and approval processes. October 14, 2026 09:00 ET | Source: Forgepoint New York, NY, Oct. 14, 2026 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) - American manufacturers can often make a part faster than they can get a quote back to the customer asking for it. That mismatch is the result of decades of automation reaching the shop floor, but rarely the office around it. Forgepoint is tackling that with Frank, an AI Inside Sales Rep built for manufacturing. Frank works alongside quoting teams across the emails, documents, pricing logic, and systems they already use, helping them move from incoming request to customer-ready quote far faster. Forgepoint founders: Jack Strauss and Alex Pareto. Forgepoint today announced a $9.8 million seed round led by Primary Venture Partners and a16z speedrun, with angel investors from OpenAI, Brex, Vercel, and SoFi also participating. The funding will bring Frank to more manufacturers, deepen integrations with the systems they already use, and grow its world-class team. Frank analyzes part files, prepares pricing using each manufacturer's own cost model, routes engineering work for human review, and follows up with the customer after approval. Engineers, estimators, and salespeople keep the technical and commercial decision making, while Frank handles the administrative work between them. Forgepoint reached a seven-figure ARR within six months of Frank's launch. Hundreds of engineers, estimators, and sales reps now use Frank each week, and across customers monthly quote throughput is up an average of 30% while time-to-quote has fallen by more than 55%. From Silicon Valley to the American Heartland Before Forgepoint, CEO Jack Strauss spent his career in industrials at Northrop Grumman, Bain & Company's Advanced Manufacturing practice, and aerospace systems integrator Xwing. He kept seeing the same disconnect: manufacturers invested heavily in automating the shop floor, while everything before and after production still moved through email, spreadsheets, and aging enterprise systems. In early 2025, Strauss and co-founder Alex Pareto, formerly Head of Engineering for Brex's Spend Management organization, spent months touring plants across the Midwest, shadowing employees and studying their processes to find where the bottlenecks were and why. "In those early days, we simply wanted to learn, as if we had been hired to do the job ourselves. We knew that before we could solve the problem, we needed to understand it deeply" said Alex Pareto, Co-Founder and CTO. The two came away convinced that the frontier AI developing in front of them in Silicon Valley could remove many of the bottlenecks they were seeing on factory floors across the Midwest. Starting with Inside Sales Inside Sales was the natural starting point. It is directly tied to revenue: a shop's capacity to answer RFQs determines how much business it wins. Second, when it comes to winning jobs, speed matters now more than ever. A 2025 Gardner Intelligence study found that nearly 50% of manufacturers expect a vendor response within 24 hours. That is a hard target when the typical RFQ arrives as an email with several attachments and missing specifications. An estimator may need to contact the customer, find similar jobs, build a cost model, secure engineering approval, apply margins, enter pricing into the ERP, generate the quote, update the CRM, and manage follow-up. Expert judgment is critical for a few of those steps. The handoffs and data entry around them stretch the process from hours into days or weeks. "We kept meeting manufacturers with strong demand and capable teams, but their best people were spending hours on administrative work. Speed is a competitive advantage, so we built Frank to keep jobs moving and free skilled operators to focus on the decisions only they can make," said Jack Strauss, CEO and Co-Founder of Forgepoint. How Frank works Frank joins a manufacturer like a new employee. He gets an email address at the company's domain and learns the shop's operating procedures, pricing rules, and approval requirements. When an RFQ arrives, he reads the email and attachments, flags missing requirements, and contacts the buyer for clarification. He prepares the quote using the manufacturer's own cost model, surfaces similar historical jobs, and routes the draft to the right reviewer. After approval, he creates the final document in the company's template, sends it, manages follow-up, and records the correspondence. Because quoting and pricing look radically different from shop to shop, Forgepoint configures Frank around how each one already works. At a metal service center Frank matches material lists and cut lengths against the catalog, applies customer-specific pricing, and checks inventory. At a foundry he reviews part files, gathers missing drawing specifications from the buyer, and prepares a first draft for an engineer. Across injection molding, automation, fabrication, stamping, and machining, the day-to-day differs but the goal is the same: quote faster, quote more, and win more deals. Early customer results On average, Forgepoint customers increase monthly quote throughput by 30% and cut time-to-quote by more than 55%, giving skilled operators more time back in their day."Before Forgepoint, we were building quotes by hand and barely keeping up. Now, Frank drafts and I can approve it in two minutes. I'm spending less time entering data and more time serving my customers," said Chas Aday, Founder and CRO of SIP Manufacturing. As Frank works, it also preserves the emails, attachments and reasoning behind every decision, building a memory of how each shop prices work. That matters as veteran employees retire and manufacturers risk losing years of pricing logic, customer preferences and exceptions that live in their heads and inboxes. "A manufacturer's ability to grow depends on how much work its team can quote, plan, and manage," said Zach Fredericks, Principal at Primary Venture Partners. "Forgepoint is giving those teams more capacity, starting with quoting. We backed Jack and Alex because they understand the details of that work and have a clear ambition to bring the same approach across the entire manufacturing back office." Looking ahead Forgepoint's mission is to put best-in-class technology into the hands of manufacturers. That begins with quoting, where slow responses can mean lost business. Over time, the company plans to apply the same approach to other back office departments, helping manufacturers compete and grow without adding administrative headcount at the same rate. About Forgepoint Forgepoint builds AI coworkers designed to automate and streamline back-office workflows for manufacturers, starting with the quoting and sales process Forgepoint's flagship product is Frank, an AI Inside Sales Rep for manufacturers, that gathers requirements, builds accurate quotes, and responds before your competitors even open the RFQ.

AI Sales Rep startup Forgepoint raises $9.8M to help manufacturers quote faster. Pet Age Staff//October 14, 2026// American manufacturers can often make a part faster than they can get a quote back to the customer asking for it. That mismatch is the result of decades of automation reaching the shop floor, but rarely the office around it. Forgepoint is tackling that with Frank, an AI Inside Sales Rep built for manufacturing. Frank works alongside quoting teams across the emails, documents, pricing logic, and systems they already use, helping them move from incoming request to customer-ready quote far faster. Forgepoint recently announced a $9.8 million seed round led by Primary Venture Partners and a16z speedrun, with angel investors from OpenAI, Brex, Vercel, and SoFi also participating. The funding will bring Frank to more manufacturers, deepen integrations with the systems they already use, and grow its world-class team. Frank analyzes part files, prepares pricing using each manufacturer's own cost model, routes engineering work for human review, and follows up with the customer after approval. Engineers, estimators, and salespeople keep the technical and commercial decision making, while Frank handles the administrative work between them. Forgepoint reached a seven-figure ARR within six months of Frank's launch. Hundreds of engineers, estimators, and sales reps now use Frank each week, and across customers monthly quote throughput is up an average of 30% while time-to-quote has fallen by more than 55%. From Silicon Valley to the American Heartland Before Forgepoint, CEO Jack Strauss spent his career in industrials at Northrop Grumman, Bain & Company's Advanced Manufacturing practice, and aerospace systems integrator Xwing. He kept seeing the same disconnect: manufacturers invested heavily in automating the shop floor, while everything before and after production still moved through email, spreadsheets, and aging enterprise systems. In early 2025, Strauss and co-founder Alex Pareto, formerly Head of Engineering for Brex's Spend Management organization, spent months touring plants across the Midwest, shadowing employees and studying their processes to find where the bottlenecks were and why. "In those early days, we simply wanted to learn, as if we had been hired to do the job ourselves. We knew that before we could solve the problem, we needed to understand it deeply" said Alex Pareto, Co-Founder and CTO. The two came away convinced that the frontier AI developing in front of them in Silicon Valley could remove many of the bottlenecks they were seeing on factory floors across the Midwest. Starting with Inside Sales Inside Sales was the natural starting point. It is directly tied to revenue: a shop's capacity to answer RFQs determines how much business it wins. Second, when it comes to winning jobs, speed matters now more than ever. A 2025 Gardner Intelligence study found that nearly 50% of manufacturers expect a vendor response within 24 hours. That is a hard target when the typical RFQ arrives as an email with several attachments and missing specifications. An estimator may need to contact the customer, find similar jobs, build a cost model, secure engineering approval, apply margins, enter pricing into the ERP, generate the quote, update the CRM, and manage follow-up. Expert judgment is critical for a few of those steps. The handoffs and data entry around them stretch the process from hours into days or weeks. "We kept meeting manufacturers with strong demand and capable teams, but their best people were spending hours on administrative work. Speed is a competitive advantage, so we built Frank to keep jobs moving and free skilled operators to focus on the decisions only they can make," said Jack Strauss, CEO and Co-Founder of Forgepoint. How Frank works Frank joins a manufacturer like a new employee. He gets an email address at the company's domain and learns the shop's operating procedures, pricing rules, and approval requirements. When an RFQ arrives, he reads the email and attachments, flags missing requirements, and contacts the buyer for clarification. He prepares the quote using the manufacturer's own cost model, surfaces similar historical jobs, and routes the draft to the right reviewer. After approval, he creates the final document in the company's template, sends it, manages follow-up, and records the correspondence. Because quoting and pricing look radically different from shop to shop, Forgepoint configures Frank around how each one already works. At a metal service center Frank matches material lists and cut lengths against the catalog, applies customer-specific pricing, and checks inventory. At a foundry he reviews part files, gathers missing drawing specifications from the buyer, and prepares a first draft for an engineer. Across injection molding, automation, fabrication, stamping, and machining, the day-to-day differs but the goal is the same: quote faster, quote more, and win more deals. Early customer results On average, Forgepoint customers increase monthly quote throughput by 30% and cut time-to-quote by more than 55%, giving skilled operators more time back in their day."Before Forgepoint, we were building quotes by hand and barely keeping up. Now, Frank drafts and I can approve it in two minutes. I'm spending less time entering data and more time serving my customers," said Chas Aday, Founder and CRO of SIP Manufacturing. As Frank works, it also preserves the emails, attachments and reasoning behind every decision, building a memory of how each shop prices work. That matters as veteran employees retire and manufacturers risk losing years of pricing logic, customer preferences and exceptions that live in their heads and inboxes. "A manufacturer's ability to grow depends on how much work its team can quote, plan, and manage," said Zach Fredericks, Principal at Primary Venture Partners. "Forgepoint is giving those teams more capacity, starting with quoting. We backed Jack and Alex because they understand the details of that work and have a clear ambition to bring the same approach across the entire manufacturing back office."

Peec AI named fastest-growing AEO vendor by Ramp; expands North American footprint with New York office. Data from Ramp Rate reveals Peec AI quadrupled market adoption to 19% while accelerating ARR to $15M, with the second-highest adoption among enterprise companies (21%) and strong traction with growing marketing teams and agencies. October 13, 2026 12:33 ET | Source: Peec AI Berlin, BERLIN, Oct. 13, 2026 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) - Peec AI, a leading all-in-one AI search visibility platform for Answer Engine Optimization (AEO) and Generative Engine Optimization (GEO), today announced it has been recognized as the fastest-growing vendor in the AEO category according to market spend data published by Ramp Rate. The company's market adoption rate grew from 4% in March 2025 to 19% in September 2026, driven by widespread adoption across enterprise organizations, mid-market businesses, growth marketing teams, and SEO agencies. During the same period, Peec AI accelerated its Annual Recurring Revenue (ARR) from $10M to $15M in just three months. "It's an honor to be recognized by Ramp Rate for our growth over this year. Ramp's data shows Peec AI is a top AEO vendor in enterprise adoption, with a 21% adoption rate among enterprise companies," stated Malte Landwehr, CPO and CMO of Peec AI. Peec AI ranks first in the AEO category in monthly adoption growth, at +0.84% per month. Peec AI also shows strong traction across mid-market (17%) and small-to-medium businesses (20%). Ramp Rate's dataset tracks corporate spend across more than 70,000 businesses. Enterprise-grade AI visibility, for teams of all sizes Throughout 2026, Peec AI expanded its platform with features built to enterprise standards, from brand perception analysis to log file integrations. Most features are available to teams of every size, whether they're on a self-serve plan or part of an enterprise deployment: * Comprehensive LLM ecosystem tracking: Monitors brand mentions at scale across major AI engines, with broad multi-model coverage of ChatGPT, Google AI Overviews, Google AI Mode, Microsoft Copilot, Gemini, Claude, Grok, Qwen, Deepseek, Mistral, Perplexity, and Meta Spark. * Brand perception and fact-checking: Analyzes AI answers to show how engines like ChatGPT, Gemini, AI Mode, and Claude describe a brand. Market, objections, and fact-checking diagnostics surface the attributes AI answers associate with a brand, identify the buying objections AI platforms repeat, and cross-reference AI-generated claims against company-supplied facts. * Actionable visibility KPIs: Peec AI provides granular reporting across core AI performance metrics, measured on every tracked AI answer, including visibility, sentiment, multi-model citation tracking, share of voice (SoV), and AI referrals. * Developer and agency integration: Provides programmatic API access to AI visibility data and a Model Context Protocol (MCP) integration for AI agent workflows like Claude Code, paired with customizable visualization tools like Power BI and Looker Studio. * Analytics and log file integrations: Peec AI integrates with Google Analytics and CDN log providers like Vercel, Cloudflare, AWS, and WordPress, connecting AI visibility to AI referral traffic and AI crawler activity. * Predictable scaling: Enterprise tiers include unlimited seats, SSO integration, multi-brand management, and multi-language tracking for international operations. On top of that, enterprise customers of Peec AI get a dedicated account manager and a named Customer Success Manager (CSM) alongside custom onboarding and prioritized support channels. Custom plans (starting around $499+/month) include direct phone support and named personnel to guide multi-market tracking architectures. Expanding footprint in North America Peec AI has opened a flagship U.S. office in New York City to support its expanding enterprise user base across North America. The hub will serve North American clients, agency partners, and strategic enterprise accounts. About Peec AI Peec AI helps marketing teams improve brand performance in AI search. More than 3,000 agencies and brands, including global enterprises, rely on Peec AI to understand where they stand, what shapes how they appear and get recommended, and where to act. The company combines original research with rigorous measurement of the markets, models, sources, competitors, and websites behind AI answers, helping teams separate meaningful signals from noise and make better-informed decisions about what to do next. Peec AI is one of Europe's fastest-growing AI software companies, surpassing $15M in ARR since launching in January 2025. Founded by Marius Meiners, Daniel Drabo, and Tobias Siwonia, Peec AI has raised $40M from investors including Singular, Antler, Combination VC, identity.vc, and S20. Learn more at peec.ai. About Ramp Rate Ramp Rate is a vendor directory powered by aggregated, anonymized data from Ramp's corporate card and bill pay platform, benchmarking corporate spend across billions of dollars and tens of thousands of businesses. Press Inquiries