Industrial AI OS startup Arrakis raises $38M, valued at $140M

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Exclusive: Arrakis Emerges from Stealth with $38 Million, Betting AI’s Biggest Payoff Is in Industrial Sectors

Publication Date: July 22, 2026, 12:00:00 UTC

By Jeremy Kahn Wed, July 22, 2026, 5:00 AM PDT | 5 min read

Arrakis, a seven-month-old startup headquartered in London and Paris, has emerged from stealth with $38 million in venture capital funding. The company is building what it calls an AI "operating system" for industrial companies, aiming to bring agentic AI to sectors including aerospace, energy, logistics, and manufacturing.

Funding Details

• Series A: $30 million, led by Blossom Capital, with participation from Accel, GFC, MainObject, and Rerail.
• Seed Round: $7.5 million, led by Accel.
• Individual Backers: Include Datadog CEO Olivier Pomel and OpenAI’s head of business products, Olivier Godement.
• Valuation: $140 million post-money, according to cofounder and CEO Rafael Quintanilla.

From Investor to Founder

Quintanilla, a former vice president at Accel, spent nearly a year traveling across the U.S., Europe, and the Middle East to develop the firm’s thesis on defense and industrial resilience. That experience led him to leave Accel and start Arrakis.

"I realized that there was a huge gap between what I was seeing at Accel and in the Valley, with us investing in companies like Anthropic and Lovable in Europe, and what I was seeing in the more industrial parts of the economy."

He noted that most AI has targeted knowledge workers who use software, but a larger portion of the economy involves the production and movement of physical goods.

"Most AI investment to date has targeted the 30% of workers behind a desk. The real ROI lies in the 70% running industrial operations."

Investor Confidence

Sonali de Rycker, the Accel partner who backed Arrakis’s seed round, emphasized her confidence in the founder.

"Rafa has a rare combination of curiosity, hustle and tireless drive. After working closely with Rafa during his time at Accel, it's an honour to be working with him again as an entrepreneur."

Competitive Landscape

Arrakis enters a crowded field. Consulting giants such as Accenture and Boston Consulting Group are racing into industrial AI, as is Palantir. Jeff Bezos-backed Prometheus—now valued in the tens of billions of dollars—is investing heavily in automating the engineering of physical products. Frontier AI labs are also circling the sector.

How Arrakis Differentiates Itself

Quintanilla argues that Arrakis occupies a distinct niche:

• Vs. Prometheus: If Prometheus worked with Airbus, Quintanilla said, it would build AI for "the core engineering of building an aircraft." Arrakis, by contrast, "want[s] to take care of everything around it… We want to be the AI layer for key operations of those companies."
• Vs. Palantir: Quintanilla said he respects the company but noted its technology was not built to be AI-native. "Palantir is a fantastic company. I think half of my team currently comes from Palantir," he said, including a former head of Palantir’s procurement and supply-chain team. "However, Palantir is a 20-year-old company that has a very hefty price point, that has a technology that is starting to become legacy."
• Vs. Consulting Firms: Quintanilla said consulting firms, even as AI changes their business model, often still have an incentive to charge for consultant hours or outsourced human labor. "If you think about what consulting firms are, they solve strategy problems for companies with human as the key enabler. We want to solve problems for companies with software and human as key enablers."

He expressed skepticism about sweeping "process transformation" approaches, positioning Arrakis as a more focused, software-driven alternative.

Photo courtesy of Arrakis