---
title: Dulo raises 130 million dollars for AI engineering models
url: https://www.elseif.net/dulo-raises-130-million-dollars-for-ai-engineering-models
published: 2026-11-04T18:03:55+00:00
language: en
section: Models
source: https://www.techtalkthai.com/google-x-co-founder-sebastian-thrun-raises-130m-for-ai-engineering-startup-dulo/
organizations: Dulo, Google, Salesforce, Pinterest, Wavii, Prometheus
publisher: elseif
---

# Dulo raises 130 million dollars for AI engineering models

Dulo, a startup co-founded by Sebastian Thrun, has raised 130 million dollars in a new funding round. The company is developing foundation models specifically tailored for hardware design tasks. This investment marks a significant step for the firm, which aims to apply artificial intelligence to complex engineering challenges. The funding was confirmed by co-founder Adrian Aoun through a social media post. The round involved several high-profile investors, including Eric Schmidt, former chief executive of Google, and Ram Shriram, an early investor in the search giant. Other participants in the round included Marc Benioff, chief executive of Salesforce, and John Doerr, a prominent venture capitalist. More than half a dozen other startup funds also joined the investment. Dulo has not disclosed its current valuation. The company's website states that it is working on models designed to automate aspects of hardware engineering. Thrun, who co-founded Google X, previously led the project that became Waymo and helped establish Google Brain, the foundation for Google DeepMind.

Aoun previously sold Wavii, an early natural language processing startup, to Google for over 30 million dollars. He has also invested in companies such as Pinterest. Thrun joined Google in 2007 after leading the development of Stanley, an early autonomous vehicle that helped spark the self-driving market. He later founded a flying taxi startup with financial support from Larry Page, a co-founder of Google. In August, Thrun indicated that robotics is a key area of focus for Dulo. The company's AI may aim to accelerate the development of industrial robots and autonomous vehicles. It is not yet clear which specific hardware design tasks Dulo's models will automate. One possibility is that the startup hopes to improve engineering simulations, which hardware teams use to check for design flaws before production. Dulo's website mentions a goal of facilitating production at the speed of light. Other AI startups are also working to improve simulation efficiency.

Vinci4D, a recently funded player, has built a platform that automates the meshing step for various simulation projects. Meshing is the process where engineers turn product blueprints into groups of small three-dimensional shapes. This arrangement reduces the hardware resources needed to run models. Other AI startups are working to speed up partial differential equations, which simulation programs rely on to predict hardware behavior under real conditions. The most prominent competitor in AI engineering is Prometheus, a startup co-led by Jeff Bezos, founder of Amazon. Prometheus raised 12 billion dollars earlier this year from Bezos and a group of financial institutions. Like Dulo, Prometheus is using AI to accelerate the development of complex hardware systems such as robots.