Fabri
Automating investment casting with AI and 3D printing to accelerate production.
Critical capability: How venture-backed innovation is making faster factories
Axilon, Fabri and Hadrian are among the RTX Ventures startups breaking bottlenecks to accelerate manufacturing
RTX is using its venture capital organization, RTX Ventures, to break bottlenecks in manufacturing across the company – a major priority as both its commercial and defense customers demand higher output and faster cycle times.
The company is investing in startups that bring modern solutions to traditional manufacturing, which in turn supports RTX’s broader efforts to streamline its own operations. Here’s how their innovations are being applied across RTX to meet customer needs.
Hadrian
Pairing robots with people to transform manufacturing and boost output.
Axilon
Modernizing and unifying factories’ digital systems to prevent downtime and failures.
Fabri: reinventing casting with AI and 3D printing
Fabri’s foundry north of Boston looks more like a lab – no roaring furnace, no haze of smoke, just 3D printers quietly humming in a clean, compact space.
The company automates a centuries-old manufacturing technique called investment casting, where wax molds are dipped in ceramic to form shells that are later filled with molten metal, then broken away to reveal the finished part. It’s how the industry produces many critical components, but it’s also slow and labor intensive, with many traditional foundries now facing yearslong backlogs.
By replacing handmade molds with automated tools and 3D printed versions, Fabri cuts production times from months to days.
“In the industry today, we’re seeing lead times between one and three years,” said Steven Davis, Fabri’s founder and CEO. “We’ve shipped parts in as fast as one week.”
Fabri accelerates development further by using AI-driven software to automate the most time-consuming steps. They can simulate hundreds of design options in parallel, move the best one into production the same day, and use predictive models to avoid the rework that’s common in conventional foundries.
This digital approach also gives Fabri unusual flexibility. While many foundries specialize in specific parts or require large orders, Fabri can make a single urgent replacement part – which could be especially valuable in quickly repairing a grounded aircraft – or switch between producing entirely different products with ease.
“The foundry that’s making turbine blades one day might be making missile fins the next day,” Davis said.
Fabri formed in 2025 and is already working with RTX’s three businesses – Collins Aerospace, Pratt & Whitney and Raytheon – on castings for several products. The company plans to expand capacity by building a new foundry every year.
Hadrian: accelerating advanced manufacturing for faster production
Similar to how Fabri is reinventing investment casting, Hadrian is rethinking how aerospace hardware is manufactured – from the early steps of machining, where raw metal is shaped into an exact design, to building intricate subassemblies that can be quickly installed into larger systems.
Onboarding a new manufacturing supplier can be a major source of delay. Before a single production run can begin, suppliers often spend weeks or months on programming, engineering and prototyping to show they can build a flawless test part that meets requirements.
Hadrian uses a software-defined production system to compress that timeline, allowing its teams to move from design to production far more quickly. Inside its factories, skilled operators work alongside robots to streamline production and increase manufacturing capacity.
A customer’s digital design file triggers the entire process, feeding into a software system that analyzes the part, determines each step and orchestrates both the automated equipment and human expertise that follow. The system generates instructions, schedules production and monitors progress, which allows Hadrian to deliver test parts in weeks instead of months.
“Getting through those first steps is a key piece,” said Chris Leombruno, RTX director of operations strategy. “To be able to transition things quickly means that we can start producing the hardware much quicker, which shortens our overall lead time and the delivery to the customer.”
Since its launch in 2021, Hadrian has built four factories and worked with Collins Aerospace and Raytheon, where Javelin and TOW weapon systems parts achieved a 98% on-time delivery rate.
RTX Ventures by the numbers
2022
RTX Ventures launched
>30
companies backed
6
now valued at over $1B
100+
collaborations at RTX
Axilon: keeping critical factories online
When Axilon’s cofounder Ben Simon looked closely at how manufacturing lines operated, he noticed that the products were cutting-edge, but the digital systems running them were outdated and disconnected. This led to equipment failures and unplanned downtime at a moment when manufacturers needed to move faster.
Simon saw that solving the problem wasn’t just an opportunity but a necessity for the U.S. manufacturing base.
“One of our beliefs, at least when it comes to the defense industrial base, is that manufacturing is the real bottleneck right now,” Simon said. “You can have the best engineering and design in the world, but if you don’t have a way to scale that, then you’re at a disadvantage.”
Axilon’s answer: make digital copies, or clones, of the entire operation, and use them, rather than shutting down actual equipment, to troubleshoot, reconfigure software or test new processes. Future capabilities will apply AI to predict maintenance needs, detect early signs of equipment failure and optimize operations before problems surface.
They’ve already deployed the core capability at Raytheon’s Andover, Massachusetts, site, where that flexibility is essential. The facility is responsible for several critical defense products and runs around the clock with almost no room for downtime. With Axilon’s digital clone environment, Raytheon teams can model adjustments, test improvements and modernize their digital backbone without stopping production.
