Three engineers who once helped build rocket engines at SpaceX have raised $15 million to open an automated steel-fabrication plant in Cincinnati.

Startup 1872 held a ribbon-cutting at its Factory One site on July 22, 2026. The company says the plant is intended to supply steel components for AI data centers and small nuclear reactors.

Raptor team turns to steel skids

The three founders, Dan Summers, Brian Mongilio, and Michael Grant, all worked at SpaceX. Summers, now chief executive of 1872, led the team that integrated and fabricated the Raptor engines that powered the Super Heavy booster for the Starship launch system.

Summers said the Raptor team paired software engineers with hardware engineers to build not only the engine, but also the system that produced it.

According to Summers, that approach brought Raptor from a first full-scale concept to production in three years, compared with a jet-engine development cycle that he said can last more than two decades.

1872 manufactures steel skids, rectangular frames that serve as a movable base for modular buildings. Skids and other prefabricated sections are a staple of modular construction, in which components are built off site and assembled in place to compress building schedules.

Summers described the parts as lower-precision than aerospace components, giving an automated system more room for error while still producing a usable result.

The American Welding Society projects that the U.S. will need 320,500 new welding professionals by 2029. The projected demand is being driven by retirements and growing needs from data centers, chip fabs, and shipyards. Summers also said tighter immigration policy under the Trump administration is adding pressure to welding-heavy industries.

“The problem that we are trying to solve is, how do we build more things with a decreasing pool of skilled labor to do it with,” Summers said.

1872 aims to sell its skids to companies building AI data centers or small modular nuclear reactors, both of which require large amounts of fabricated steel. Both target markets are expanding: U.S. data center construction has climbed sharply in recent years as cloud providers and AI developers race to add capacity, and technology companies including Amazon and Google have announced agreements to support development of small modular reactors to power their facilities.

Robots weld at $0.12 per inch

The welding work is being done through a partnership with Columbus-based Path Robotics, whose robotic arms are used for automated arc welding.

Path Robotics says its systems achieve first-pass yields of 95% to 100%, meaning the percentage of parts that pass inspection without rework or scrap.

The company says its arms operate with the arc on about 70% of the time, compared with 10% to 12% for human welders, who spend more time positioning and repositioning metal.

Path Robotics says robotic welding costs about $0.12 per weld inch, compared with about $0.78 by hand, an 85% reduction.

Welding a skid takes two to four hours, but assembling the cut components beforehand can take four to five days, Summers said.

“The whole name of the game is how do we keep that machine fed,” he said.

1872 describes its software stack in two parts. An “Architect” system takes a customer’s digital design files and builds a full manufacturing plan, including pricing and material sourcing.

A “Conductor” runs the factory floor, moving material and coordinating robots, which could include self-driving vehicles delivering parts or rail-mounted arms along a production line, Summers said.

He added that 1872 may stop at 80% autonomous operation if the pursuit of 100% no longer makes economic sense. The company hopes its prototype factory will automate most of the fabrication process by 2027.

1872 said the $15 million round, led through private funds advised by The O.H.I.O. Fund, ranks among the largest seed investments in Ohio history. The round also comes amid growing venture investment in U.S. manufacturing and automation startups, a category often described as “hard tech.”

The plant is located in Camp Washington’s Spring Grove Avenue industrial corridor, inside the former David Hummel Building Company site, a 1903 structure whose namesake worked on Cincinnati City Hall and Union Terminal.

“Camp Washington has been one of Cincinnati’s most important industrial districts for more than 150 years,” said Jill Meyer, a founding partner of The O.H.I.O. Fund, adding that 1872 shows “its next chapter is being written right here.”