Adam, the viral Y Combinator startup behind a text-to-3D modeling tool, just closed a $4.1 million seed round led by TQ Ventures. After generating over 10 million social media impressions and attracting term sheets "over email without any meetings," according to CEO Zach Dive, the company is now pivoting from consumer makers to enterprise engineers with an AI copilot for professional CAD workflows launching by year-end.
Adam just proved that going viral can fast-track your fundraising timeline. The Y Combinator Winter 2025 startup closed a $4.1 million seed round with barely any formal pitching required, thanks to the explosive social media response to its text-to-3D modeling tool. "We were getting term sheets over email without any meetings," CEO Zach Dive told TechCrunch in an exclusive interview. The company generated over 10 million social media impressions with its initial launch, giving investors a clear signal that consumer appetite for AI-powered 3D creation tools was massive. TQ Ventures led the round, with participation from 468 Capital, Pioneer, Script Capital, and Transpose Platform, plus angel investors including PostHog's Tim Glaser and YC's Trevor Blackwell. But here's where Adam's story gets interesting - the viral consumer success was always meant to be a stepping stone to enterprise. Dive and cofounder Aaron Li, both UC Berkeley Master of Design graduates, had planned to target professional CAD workflows from the beginning but felt the technology wasn't quite ready for enterprise demands. "We initially focused on makers, not engineers," Dive explained. "But AI models improved faster than we expected." Now Adam is racing to launch an AI copilot for professional-grade CAD workflows by the end of 2025. The pivot makes strategic sense. While the original tool lets creators without CAD skills generate 3D models from text prompts, early user feedback revealed that text isn't always the optimal interface for 3D interaction. "For our copilot, we blended in different interaction paradigms - users can select different parts of the 3D object and converse with it," Dive said. This multimodal approach could give Adam an edge over existing text-to-CAD competitors like , which is already available in the market. The company's viral launch momentum has proven invaluable for talent acquisition, a critical need as Adam builds out its AI and engineering teams to "give models the right context for reasoning in space." High-profile endorsements haven't hurt either - founder Guillermo Rauch called Adam "the v0 of CAD," comparing it to Vercel's own AI-powered web creation platform. "It's simpler, faster, and reaches a broader audience," . Adam is already monetizing its consumer base with "tens of thousands of individual users and a growing base of paying customers" across standard ($5.99/month) and pro ($17.99/month) plans. But the real prize lies in enterprise CAD, where the company plans to focus initially on mechanical engineering workflows. The startup will begin with , the cloud-based CAD platform known for reshaping traditional workflows. "The same thing will be true with AI," Dive predicted, suggesting that AI copilots could drive the next major shift in how engineers approach computer-aided design. Adam's enterprise offering won't try to replace engineers but will streamline time-consuming tasks like applying identical changes across multiple CAD files. The company already has "testers validating different features" for the enterprise copilot, though monetization of that tier hasn't begun yet. The jump from helping amateurs create 3D Pikachus to supporting professional mechanical engineers represents a significant technical challenge, but Adam's viral success has bought them the attention and capital needed to make the transition. With AI models improving rapidly and enterprise demand for AI-powered CAD tools growing, Adam's consumer-first strategy might prove to be the perfect trojan horse for entering the lucrative B2B market.
