GoKawiilEx-OpenAI research chief's startup Arda raises $230M at $1.5B valuation
Bob McGrew, OpenAI's former research chief and a longtime Palantir engineering lead, has raised $230 million for his manufacturing startup Arda at a $1.5 billion valuation. The round was led by Altimeter Capital, Accel and Khosla Ventures, and Arda's AI software is already deployed with defense tech company Anduril. McGrew describes the product as an AI assistant for manufacturing engineers, similar to coding tools like Claude or Cursor but aimed at speeding up assembly-line changes.