--- title: Forgepoint's AI Quoting Software Gives Manufacturers an Inside Sales Rep Called Frank description: Forgepoint raised $9.8M led by Primary Venture Partners and a16z speedrun for Frank, AI quoting software that answers manufacturers' RFQs. author: Darie Nani (Editor-in-Chief) date: 2026-10-14T13:29:14.689Z updated: 2026-10-14T13:36:19.986Z canonical: https://www.sovereignmagazine.com/article/ai-quoting-software-forgepoint image: https://cdn.nanimediahouse.com/ai-quoting-software-forgepoint-founders.webp categories: Artificial Intelligence, Startups content_type: Spotlight region: New York City publication: Sovereign Magazine about: - type: Organization name: Forgepoint description: Forgepoint is a New York company that makes AI software for manufacturers' back offices, starting with quoting. Its AI inside sales rep, Frank, reads requests for quote, prepares pricing with each manufacturer's own cost model, routes drafts for human approval and sends and follows up on quotes. Forgepoint raised a $9.8 million seed round led by Primary Venture Partners and a16z speedrun in October 2026. url: https://forgepoint.ai/ foundingDate: 2025-01-01T00:00:00.000Z industry: Artificial Intelligence --- Forgepoint, a New York startup whose AI assistant Frank prepares and sends quotes for manufacturers, has raised a $9.8 million seed round led by Primary Venture Partners and a16z speedrun, Andreessen Horowitz's program for early-stage startups. Angel investors from OpenAI, Brex, Vercel and SoFi also took part. Forgepoint reached seven-figure annual recurring revenue within six months of launching Frank, and hundreds of engineers, estimators and sales reps now use it each week. Across its customers, monthly quote throughput is up an average of 30% and time-to-quote has fallen by more than 55%, the company says. The new money will bring Frank to more manufacturers, deepen its integrations with the systems they already use and grow the team. ## Manufacturing Quoting Software and the RFQ Process American manufacturers can often make a part faster than they can get a quote back to the customer asking for it. [Decades of automation have reached the shop floor](https://www.sovereignmagazine.com/article/how-ai-driven-manufacturing-is-bringing-production-back-to-america-lessons-from-gsk-s-30b-inv), but rarely the office around it, where quoting still runs through email, spreadsheets and aging enterprise systems. > "Speed is a competitive advantage, so we built Frank to keep jobs moving and free skilled operators to focus on the decisions only they can make." > — Jack Strauss, CEO and co-founder of Forgepoint A typical request for quote (RFQ) arrives as an email with several attachments and missing specifications. To answer it, an estimator may need to contact the customer, find similar past jobs, build a cost model, get engineering approval, apply margins, enter the pricing into the ERP, generate the quote, update the CRM and then follow up. Expert judgment is needed for a few of those steps, and the handoffs and data entry around them stretch the process from hours into days or weeks. A 2025 Gardner Intelligence study of industrial buyers found that nearly half of manufacturers expect a vendor to respond within 24 hours. "We kept meeting manufacturers with strong demand and capable teams, but their best people were spending hours on administrative work," Strauss said. ## Frank, Forgepoint's AI Inside Sales Rep for Manufacturers Frank joins a manufacturer much as a new employee would. It gets an email address at the company's domain and learns the shop's operating procedures, pricing rules and approval requirements. When an RFQ arrives, Frank reads the email and its attachments, including part files, flags missing requirements and asks the buyer for them. It prepares the quote with the manufacturer's own cost model, pulls up similar jobs from the past and sends the draft to the right reviewer. After approval, it produces the final document in the company's template, sends it, follows up with the customer and records the correspondence. Engineers, estimators and salespeople keep the technical and commercial decisions. ![Forgepoint co-founders Jack Strauss and Alex Pareto on a plant floor](https://cdn.nanimediahouse.com/forgepoint-founders-plant.webp) *Photo: Forgepoint* Because quoting and pricing differ so much from one shop to the next, Forgepoint sets Frank up around how each customer already works. At a metal service center, Frank matches material lists and cut lengths against the catalog, applies customer-specific pricing and checks inventory. At a foundry, it reviews part files, gathers missing drawing specifications from the buyer and prepares a first draft for an engineer. Forgepoint also works with manufacturers in injection molding, automation, fabrication, stamping and machining. Frank keeps the emails, attachments and reasoning behind every decision, which gives each shop a record of how it prices work as experienced estimators retire. "Before Forgepoint, we were building quotes by hand and barely keeping up. Now, Frank drafts and I can approve it in two minutes," said Chas Aday, founder and CRO of SIP Manufacturing, a beverage contract manufacturer that is investing more than $100 million in a new plant in Southaven, Mississippi. "I'm spending less time entering data and more time serving my customers." ## Jack Strauss and Alex Pareto, From Silicon Valley to the Midwest Strauss spent his career in industrials before Forgepoint, at defense contractor Northrop Grumman, in Bain & Company's advanced manufacturing practice and at Xwing, an autonomous aviation company whose autonomy division Joby Aviation bought in 2024. In each job he saw manufacturers [spend heavily on automating production](https://www.sovereignmagazine.com/article/pelico-ae-ventures-aerospace-orchestration) while the work before and after it still moved through email, spreadsheets and old enterprise software. His co-founder and CTO, Alex Pareto, previously co-founded Demeanor, a Y Combinator startup later bought by NTWRK, and then led engineering for Brex's spend management business. In early 2025 the two spent months touring plants across the Midwest, shadowing employees and studying where work slowed down and why. "In those early days, we simply wanted to learn, as if we had been hired to do the job ourselves. We knew that before we could solve the problem, we needed to understand it deeply," Pareto said. They started with inside sales because it is tied directly to revenue, since a shop's capacity to answer RFQs decides how much business it wins. ## Forgepoint's $9.8M Seed Round and Plans Beyond Quoting Primary Venture Partners is a New York seed fund whose portfolio includes chip developer Etched. Forgepoint went through the [fifth cohort of a16z speedrun](https://www.sovereignmagazine.com/article/space-a16z-speedrun-streaming-filesystem), which gives early startups up to $1 million in initial funding and a 12-week residency in San Francisco. "A manufacturer's ability to grow depends on how much work its team can quote, plan, and manage," said Zach Fredericks, principal at Primary Venture Partners. "Forgepoint is giving those teams more capacity, starting with quoting. We backed Jack and Alex because they understand the details of that work and have a clear ambition to bring the same approach across the entire manufacturing back office." After quoting, Forgepoint plans to take the same approach to other back-office departments, so that manufacturers can grow without adding administrative staff at the same rate. **About Forgepoint** Forgepoint is a New York company that makes AI software for manufacturers' back offices, starting with quoting. Its AI inside sales rep, Frank, reads requests for quote, prepares pricing with each manufacturer's own cost model, routes drafts for human approval and sends and follows up on quotes. Forgepoint raised a $9.8 million seed round led by Primary Venture Partners and a16z speedrun in October 2026. [Website](https://forgepoint.ai/) ## FAQ **Q: What is the best quoting software for manufacturers?** It depends on the shop. Estimating and quoting tools for job shops help an estimator build and send quotes faster, while AI quoting software such as Forgepoint's Frank also handles the administrative steps around the quote: reading the RFQ email and part files, asking the buyer for missing details, pricing with the shop's own cost model, routing the draft for approval and following up after it is sent. **Q: What is an RFQ in manufacturing?** A request for quote (RFQ) is a buyer's request to a supplier for a price on a specific part or job, usually sent by email with drawings, part files and quantities attached. The supplier answers with a quote, and if the buyer accepts it, the buyer issues a purchase order (PO). **Q: How long does it take a manufacturer to send a quote?** Often days or weeks, because one RFQ can involve contacting the customer, finding similar past jobs, building a cost model, getting engineering approval and entering the pricing into several systems. Nearly half of manufacturers expect a vendor to respond within 24 hours, according to a 2025 Gardner Intelligence study. Forgepoint says its customers have cut their time-to-quote by more than 55%. **Q: Who invested in Forgepoint?** Primary Venture Partners and a16z speedrun led the $9.8 million seed round, with angel investors from OpenAI, Brex, Vercel and SoFi also taking part.