Geopolitical pressure accelerates a demand in many countries and regions to excuse again – that is, to redevelop the critical infrastructure in the industry, and bring back businesses, which has moved or outsourced some or all their industrial operations to cheaper countries.

But this is easier said than done. In the most important area of ​​precision manufacturing, for example, most countries in the West have not been set up to deal with the current production requirements facing businesses.

This is the challenge Isembard purpose to address. The British boot said they intend to create a network of factories in different Western places. CEO Alexander Fitzgerald told TechCrunch that the first of these started working in London in January, claiming that he could already respond to requests for high precision parts. It still has to announce further locations.

The goal here is to target companies that may not sink billions of Capeex into their own factories, but would usually contract with a manufacturer to produce on their behalf.

“Let’s say that you make an unwritten air system, like a drone,” says Fitzgerald. ‘You will send us a design for a few key parts for it in a 3D file. We give you a quote for how fast we can do it, and the price. And then we machine the part of the material needed, and we send it to you. And sometimes we may be doing the actual final mounting. ‘ Isembard will also strive for scale benefits over its own activities, with a single own software layer, Masonos, connecting and using its facilities.

It does not differ fundamentally as sending the same request to a factory in Asia, but it joins the increasing demand for more local, resilient and greener supply chains.

Fitzgerald believes that British legacy providers will struggle to keep up with the larger repetition swing: supply chains are fragmented, competent operators have retired or moved to different roles, and factories are outdated – all outcomes that have moved to China and other countries in recent years. By utilizing software and automation, Isembard believes that it can provide a viable alternative to the current state of affairs, while it is also faster and cheaper.

This pitch has helped the boot to acquire a seed round of £ 7m (about $ 9 million) led by Notion Capital, with participation of 201 enterprise, base capital, forward fund, material enterprises, nonverlift ventures and NP-hard enterprises, as well as angels, including the EU Inc promoter and the founder of the SPACEFORGE Joshua Western.

Isembard’s go-to-market strategy initially focuses on air, defense and energy. Fitzgerald refused to call customers, but he said the company saw that most of its initial traction of defense and fast growing startups came. He claimed that he and his team also had talks with primes and government agencies.

With only 12 employees, Isembard is still small. This is partly because it has so far been funded itself with the proceeds of Fitzgerald’s first exit-he sold his previous company Cuckoo to Giganet In 2022. But it is also because he deliberately chose a less capital-intensive route than US automation Start Hadrian, who collected about $ 216.5 million in 2024 to modernize parts manufacturing.

“We believe it takes too long, too much Capeex and too much concentration talent in one place to build these large 100,000 square feet factories,” he said. “What we actually do is a distributed factory model where we have many smaller units, but all with the same operating model technology and automation.”

It is a reference to the functionality of Masonos, that own system that uses Isambard’s plants, which will do “everything from the quote and estimate of work to a client, to the management of our own supply chain, automation scheduling and the prioritization, but also the core manufacturing and how you encode the machines themselves,” Fitzgerald said. “Right now, the problem is that it’s all based on paper, or it’s all built in the 70s,” he said.

Despite this modern software layer, Isembard is very an engineering business. With a minor spell -adjustment due to the original already in use, the name is a nod to the British industrialist and engineer Isambard Kingdom BrunelKnown for its work during the industrial revolution. But it also takes a page of his father, as told by the start in his manifesto.

“When the father of Isambard Kingdom Brunel saw that British soldiers returned from the War of the Peninsula with injured feet, because of the suppliers of sloping footwear,” the story reads, “he founded a shoe factory.”

This reference is meant to reflect Isembard’s spirit and ambition, but it is no coincidence that it is about soldiers. None of Fitzgerald’s family was in the military, but he “always had a sense of patriotism” and has been a reservist since 2016. This inspired Isembard, but the company’s ambitions extend beyond the United Kingdom and Europe, possibly to North America, Australia and New Zealand. “We want to help solve industrialization for the West,” he said.