Bloom raises $3.6M to build an AI marketplace for US manufacturing

Justin Kosmides co-founded Bloom in 2023 to be a savior for the mobility industry: he had watched e-bike and e-scooter companies fail because they couldn’t, or wouldn’t, outsource hard problems like logistics, manufacturing, and supply-chain building, and he wanted to convince survivors and new entrants to let Bloom handle that work instead.

Tariffs the Trump administration imposed on dozens of countries, partly to revive U.S. manufacturing, accelerated a domestic hardware boom already underway — suddenly it wasn’t just mobility companies building out domestic supply chains, as robotics startups and drone makers began popping up too. That was an opportunity for Bloom, based in Detroit, but seizing it meant reinventing the company: instead of handling manufacturing and logistics itself, Bloom shifted to a pure marketplace model built around supply-chain AI agents that customers use to find suppliers, parts, or manufacturing and engineering services — an approach Kosmides compares to an AI-driven Alibaba for contract manufacturers in China.

That reinvention slowed Bloom’s fundraising, but the company has since made more than 2,000 matches for over 140 companies and wants to grow faster. On Wednesday, Bloom announced a $3.6 million seed round led by SNAK Venture Partners, a marketplace-focused investment firm, joined by Flyover Capital, deep-tech investor Mana Ventures, and Detroit-area backers Detroit Venture Partners, Invest Detroit Ventures, and the Michigan Outdoor Innovation Fund. “I’m excited to be done with fundraising and get back to building,” Kosmides said.

SNAK first met Bloom in April of last year, early in the pivot — early enough that the firm passed on its pre-seed round, saying it liked the founder and thesis but wanted more traction. It kept tracking Bloom as the startup grew more software-focused. By May of this year, Bloom had made as much revenue in five months as in all of 2025, with memberships up fivefold and low churn — enough traction, this time, to lead the round. Kosmides said the fundraising climate has gotten tougher, with investors more reluctant to write term sheets as everyone tries to work out what’s real amid fast-improving AI models.

Bloom’s platform handles both sides of a supplier relationship, with some customers posting contract opportunities and others bidding on them, and it manages quoting, booking, and payment — matching companies with suppliers for manufacturing, assembly, design and engineering, freight, warehousing, repairs, and even hazardous-materials shipping. Kosmides contrasts this with parts marketplaces like Fictiv, Xometry, and MacroFab, built for finding a single part rather than matching complex requirements across bidders. About 30-40% of the matching data comes directly from supplier companies, he said, with the rest from public sources and from transaction data the platform generates as it grows.

Kosmides pointed to one Michigan-based manufacturer that, before working with Bloom, took on odd jobs like refurbishing thermostats and scooters; it’s now bidding on drone-assembly contracts. The ability to discover and match suppliers electronically, he said, is largely missing from U.S. manufacturing today.

Why it matters

Bloom’s pivot to an AI matchmaking model captures a broader shift as tariffs push more U.S. hardware and robotics startups to build domestic supply chains — a market where, as Kosmides points out, electronic discovery and matching between buyers and suppliers has largely been missing.