PreScalar raises $7M from Dynamo and BMW i Ventures to tackle factory firmware challenges

PreScalar has raised $7 million in seed funding to push a very specific fix for a very old factory problem: parts that show up with the wrong or outdated firmware. Dynamo Ventures and BMW i Ventures led the round, with Blue Wire Capital, Uplift Ventures, and Antler also joining in.

The company sells modular test stations that sit on the production line and let manufacturers test, update, and track firmware in one place. That matters because many factories still deal with software updates the hard way, either by reprogramming parts by hand or sending them back. PreScalar wants to make that workflow part of the line itself.

The founders are not arriving cold. Skyler Salman previously led testing at Cruise, Rivian, Waymo, and Google. Ben Fredrickson worked on safety-critical software at Cruise, Auris, and Remedy Robotics. John Cathcart handled product launches at Cruise, Lucid, SF Motors, and Chrysler. The company was founded in 2025, and the pitch is basically that the team has already built this kind of infrastructure inside big companies and now wants to sell it to everyone else.

The system starts small, with a single test station, then expands along the production line. It also folds test workflows, firmware management, and data collection into one dataset, which should give manufacturers a clearer view of every device as more lines, products, and suppliers come online. PreScalar says its customers include fast-growing technology companies and large international manufacturers, though it hasn’t named them.

The startup also said at Antler’s Spring 2026 US portfolio showcase that it had signed pilot contracts worth more than $100,000 with a leading AV company and an electronics manufacturer, plus an agreement for further expansion. The new capital will go into research and development, hardware manufacturing, hiring, and commercial deployments. Investors are clearly betting that software-defined hardware will keep spreading, and that factories will need better plumbing than clipboards and patch cables.