In A San Francisco Basement, An Ultra-Fast Electronics Factory Is Wowing Investors And The Likes Of NASA And GE

Tempo Automation's Jeff McAlvay: His big idea was to make hardware development happen at the speed of software development. San Francisco isn't known as a manufacturing center. But in the heart of the city, not far from the highway, a venture-backed startup, Tempo Automation, is manufacturing electronics for big-name clients. Tempo, which has raised a total of $75 million from investors that include Point72 Ventures, Lockheed Martin and Lux Capital, isn't your typical, mass-production contract manufacturer. Instead, in its tucked-away basement factory, Tempo is helping companies like Lockheed Martin, General Electric, Hitachi and NASA produce small runs and prototypes of printed circuit boards quickly and accurately thanks to its proprietary software, machine learning and automation. On a recent visit, workers wearing white or gray smocks and special yellow tape in their shoes to draw static electricity into the ground, moved blue trollies of electronic components that are scanned by digital QR code into position.