By Darell, Anchit, Ishan and the Strata team.

We are building the AI-native orchestration layer for physical R&D

We turn hardware test systems into programmable, intelligent infrastructure.


TL;DR

Strata is the orchestration layer that makes physical test systems programmable, enabling R&D teams to run closed-loop, AI-native experiments on real hardware at software speed.

Opportunity: $50B+ TAM for R&D software across aerospace, automotive, robotics, biotech, and energy. Every advanced hardware company rebuilds brittle versions internally.

Traction: Live closed-loop control on rocket engines. Engineers at SpaceX, Relativity, and Illumina testing Strata. ~$100k+ consulting engagement with Illumina in progress. Pre-revenue, production-validated.

Ask: Seed round to convert pilots to $1M+ ARR, hire 3-5 engineers, and scale across aerospace, robotics, and biotech.


1. The Problem

Every advanced hardware company runs thousands of tests to validate and iterate. Leading a 100+ person rocketry team in the Mojave Desert, we watched NI systems freeze during live engine tests, unable to determine if hardware, software, or data was failing. After more than a quarter fighting LabVIEW failures, we built our own stack. Engineers from that program now at SpaceX and Relativity report the same bottlenecks.

Current test infrastructure is:

Result: R&D teams spend 60-80% of time wrangling infrastructure, not doing development.[1] Test engineers spend 50% of time maintaining obsolete systems.[2] Test cycles that should take hours take weeks.


2. Why Now