SAN FRANCISCO -- A new startup made up of former Autodesk and Flex executives plans to roll out a robot-driven platform for manufacturing electronics.

Bright Machines says adaptive software-driven robot cells are the future of manufacturing. The startup has raised $179 million from venture capitalists in support of its efforts to automate factory-level processes. It claims to have put its robots in use at customer sites in half a dozen countries, according to a report in Reuters.

The Bright Machines team includes chief executive Amar Hanspal, former co-CEO of Autodesk, and Lior Susan, who while at Flex from 2012-2015 helped run its SaaS unit and its Lab IX venture funding arm, which incubated more then 30 hardware companies. Joining them on the board is Carl Bass, also a former president and CEO of Autodesk, and chief architect for AutoCAD; and Flex CEO Mike McNamara.

Susan is also founder of Eclipse Ventures, which provided the funding.

Bright Machines says its goal is to make a machine that could take material and convert it into a final product without human intervention or manual labor.

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