Re:Build, which spun out Slate Auto, raises $2.1 billion

Re:Build, a Massachusetts-based manufacturing accelerator, said Tuesday it has raised $2.1 billion in a round led by General Catalyst and JPMorganChase’s Strategic Investment Group. The company did not disclose its other investors.

Founded in 2020, Re:Build bills itself as “America’s answer to Shenzhen.” Its model has two tracks: teaming up with industrial firms on the design, engineering and large-scale manufacture of products in fields such as aerospace and defense, and incubating startups in “critical, underserved markets.” The company spun out EV startup Slate Auto in 2023, after co-founders Jeff Wilke and Miles Arnone conceived the idea in 2022. Slate Auto has since raised at least $1.4 billion on its own, including from Jeff Bezos’ family office, to build an ultra-low-cost, customizable pickup truck.

Re:Build has deep Amazon ties. Wilke, Re:Build’s co-founder, is Amazon’s former commercial CEO; chief digital and product officer Wei Gao is a longtime Amazon vice president and technical adviser to Bezos. Several other executives also came from the e-commerce giant. The company claims hundreds of products and production systems launched across its six-year history, with a network of businesses it says now counts more than 2,100 U.S. employees spread across more than 2.4 million square feet of manufacturing space.

“We started Re:Build because the deindustrialization of America is an economic failure and national security risk,” Wilke said in a statement. He added that the new funding lets the company expand faster toward building American industrial leadership. General Catalyst CEO Hemant Taneja framed the round similarly, calling the rebuilding of U.S. industrial capacity one of today’s most important economic and national-security priorities, and arguing the sector needs manufacturing platforms able to operate at real scale.

Why it matters

The round lands as investors increasingly back U.S. manufacturing and supply-chain capacity as a hedge against reliance on China — a trend that could funnel more capital toward industrial-startup incubators like Re:Build rather than single-product manufacturers.