London-based manufacturing startup Isembard has raised $50m to develop 25 new AI factories serving defence, robotics and aerospace industries by the end of the year.
The funding round was led by Union Square Ventures, with Tamarack Global, IQ Capital and Notion Capital also pouring in cash. This comes after Isembard, which was founded in late 2024, raised $9m in April 2025 from backers including 201 Ventures and NP-Hard Ventures.
Announcing the raise on Monday, Isembard said it would also develop its engineering team and launch in France, Germany and Ukraine.
The company's business model focuses on two strands: building new factories from scratch, and franchising existing small to medium-sized factories, which Isembard revamps using proprietary software and tech.
Isembard’s software provides a single, agentic operating layer, integrating steps from quoting and scheduling to quality control and delivery.
Its factories, all currently based in Europe and the US, aim to reshore manufacturing for critical industries. Currently, many supply chains — even for critical technologies like military drones — rely on component parts manufactured in China, a key challenge for the region’s tech sovereignty ambitions.
Isembard founder and CEO Alexander Fitzgerald previously told Sifted that having a local supply chain is “part of the scoring mechanism for any UK programme,” adding “it's why you've got not just venture[-backed] but prime businesses setting up new production facilities in the UK to win those programmes.”
Some of those startups include drone makers like Germany-based Stark or Quantum Systems, which expanded into the UK last year.
“Manufacturing is the origin of our security, prosperity and sense of purpose as nations,” Fitzgerald said in the company announcement. “Our mission is to forge industrial acceleration.”
