How Agile Factories Unlock Speed, Customization, and National Resilience with Edward Mehr

Manufacturing has long been the bottleneck between imagination and reality. From aerospace to automotive, complex physical products still take years to tool, validate, and produce. Machina Labs is working to change that equation by turning factories into flexible, software-driven systems that can build almost anything, anywhere.

Edward Mehr, co-founder and CEO of Machina Labs, joins Greg to unpack his journey from early software obsessions to SpaceX, and ultimately to founding a company focused on rethinking how the world makes metal parts. Drawing from hands-on experience across software, robotics, and aerospace manufacturing, Edward shares why factories themselves are the real product, and how breaking the link between tooling and design unlocks speed, resilience, and creativity.

The conversation explores how Machina Labs’ robotic “Robocraftsman” systems combine dexterity, AI-driven learning, and modular deployment to form metal without molds or dies. The result is manufacturing that adapts as fast as software, enabling rapid iteration, distributed production, and entirely new business models.

Highlights from the conversation include:

• Edward’s early fascination with computers and making things, and how hands-on craft and coding shaped his view of the physical and digital worlds
• Lessons from SpaceX on why manufacturing speed, not engineering ambition, is often the true constraint in hardware innovation
• Why traditional factories are locked to specific designs and materials, and how Machina Labs is building product-agnostic, software-defined factories
• The concept of the Robocraftsman, a robotic system that learns like a human craftsperson and adapts processes in real time using data and AI
• How Machina Labs captures data from both physical forming and simulation to train models that optimize force, tooling, and process parameters
• Early traction in aerospace and defense, including dramatically reducing lead times for legacy aircraft parts that once took years to replace
• Expanding into automotive manufacturing and enabling mass customization directly from OEMs without expensive tooling
• A major partnership in the UAE focused on rapidly deployable, distributed manufacturing for defense and commercial resilience
• The strategic importance of factories as national security assets in an era of fragile global supply chains
• How portable, containerized manufacturing systems open the door to off-world production on the Moon, Mars, and beyond
• The challenges of building multidisciplinary teams across robotics, AI, and materials science, and how leadership evolves as companies scale
• Edward’s vision for the future of manufacturing, where physical expression becomes as fast, personal, and iterative as software development

If you are building hardware, scaling robotics, or rethinking how physical products get made, this episode offers a deep look at what it takes to bring software-speed thinking into the world of atoms.

Learn more about Machina Labs: https://machinalabs.ai/

Machina Labs Advances Custom Automotive Manufacturing with AI and Robotics: https://machinalabs.ai/resources/machina-labs-advances-custom-automotive-manufacturing-with-ai-and-robotics

Strategic Development Fund Announces Investment and Initial Agreement with Machina Labs: https://machinalabs.ai/resources/uae-strategic-development-fund-announces-investment-and-initial-partnership-with-machina-labs

Connect with Edward Mehr on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/edward-mehr/