It started as a side comment from one of our now angel investors:

"Folio; seems this name came from your prior focus. Are you planning to keep it?"

The truth? We'd been thinking about it. Because when he sent that note in August 2025, we really had outgrown "Folio."

What began as a simple tool to help teams build proposals and organize product portfolios (hence "Folio") had evolved into something far more ambitious. We'd rebuilt from the ground up hand-in-hand with our design partners, because we'd discovered the real problem to solve.

That journey led us to a dual milestone.

Today, we're proud to share that Folio is now Bardin, and we've closed our pre-seed round, uniting an incredible group of angels who believe, as we do, that it's time to fundamentally re-engineer how industrial commerce works.

The Technical Gap: Why Industrial Sales Teams Need Industrial AI

This evolution brought clarity not only to our name and identity, but to the singular problem we are solving.

As we spent the year shadowing industrial sales calls and application engineers, we discovered the real bottleneck isn't the products or pricing (or figuring out how to present them in well-designed proposals or quotes).

It's the technical gap between sales and engineering.

The Sales-Engineering Bottleneck in Technical Sales

It's the sales professional who understands the customer's application but can't answer the technical question.

It's the application engineer who knows every spec but gets pulled into twenty-five deals a day, becoming the bottleneck.

It's the brilliant technical answer that arrives three days too late, after the prospect has moved on.

We watched high-value deals slip away because knowledge couldn't move fast enough between those who build and those who sell.

How Industrial AI Coworkers Bridge the Knowledge Gap

Industrial sales (especially those in the industrial automation space, where we're focusing) is inherently technical; you can't sell a hydraulic system, a PLC, or a robotic arm without deep engineering knowledge. But your sales team can't all be engineers, and your engineers can't spend all day on sales calls.

That's the divide we're bridging, and we needed a name that captured it.

We found it in John Bardeen.

Why We Chose Bardin: Industrial AI Built for Sales and Engineering

John Bardeen: Building Practical Innovation at Scale

Bardeen co-invented the transistor in 1947 at Bell Labs, that tiny, reliable component that became the foundational building block for the entire digital world.

It wasn't flashy.

It wasn't obvious at first.

But it was fundamental.

He won his first Nobel Prize in Physics for this breakthrough in 1956. Then he did something almost unprecedented: he won a second Nobel Prize in Physics in 1972 for his work on superconductivity.

He remains the only person in history to win the Nobel Prize in Physics twice.

The Transistor Philosophy Applied to Industrial AI

What resonates with us isn't the glory (though he definitely deserves it), it's the approach. Bardeen built a practical component that solved an immediate problem while enabling something far greater. The transistor worked on its own on day one and enabled computing. Superconductivity enabled MRI machines and particle accelerators. He focused on infrastructure that let others solve their problems.

That's our approach, and why our name (pronounced "Bard-Inn") is an homage to him: Just as each transistor was both immediately useful and part of something transformative, every interaction with Bardin delivers value now while building toward something much bigger.

Bardin's AI coworkers (more about them HERE) support the immediate productivity pains of industrial pre-sales (like feasibility analysis) and post-sales (like configuration support) and coming soon, sales (like complex quoting), supporting deals today, all while passively capturing the reasoning and application information behind every decision to build the foundational intelligence layer for industrial commerce tomorrow.

Bardin's Visual Identity: Industrial AI Symbolism in Modern Design

The principle of building a practical component that delivers immediate value while enabling an immense future, just like the transistor, is also reflected in our visual identity.

The logo form pays homage to the transistor itself. Within it, the distinct cuts in the vertical lines represent electronic nodes, points of connection, symbolizing how our AI coworkers seamlessly connect disparate information into clear, actionable answers.

The pillar-like structure is deliberate. It speaks to architectural permanence, to building something that lasts. It's a direct nod to our core function: turning scattered, unstructured tribal knowledge into a powerful, permanent asset, with our long-term vision of building a proprietary industrial commerce knowledge graph. It also reflects our deep respect for the foundational industries we serve, industries built on reliability, precision, and lasting value.

Bardin's Mission: Industrial AI Coworkers for Every Sales Professional

The identity is the promise; the mission is how we deliver.

Our mission is clear: to put an AI application engineer in the hands of every industrial sales professional. Our specialized AI Coworkers support the entire customer journey, answering complex technical questions, generating critical industrial sales assets, and automating intricate technical workflows.

AI Agents That Capture Engineering Knowledge

But here's what makes Bardin different: while they work, they passively capture the "why" behind every application and use case. When your engineer explains why a specific motor works better in high-humidity environments, Bardin learns. When your sales team discovers a new cross-sell opportunity in a particular vertical, Bardin captures it. When someone documents why a customer chose configuration A over configuration B, that reasoning becomes part of your permanent knowledge base.

Scaling Technical Expertise with Industrial AI

We end the momentum-killing cycle of engineering escalations, painful documentation searches, and "broken telephone" handoffs that have crippled industrial selling for decades. We empower teams to close high-value deals with unprecedented speed and accuracy, delight customers, and scale without limits.

Bardin's Core Values: Building Industrial AI with Precision and Purpose

Our mission is enabled by a deep commitment to the core values that define us:

Built to Empower: As an essential enabler, Bardin serves the dual purpose of delivering immediate utility and building permanent knowledge. We exist to amplify human expertise, not replace it. We obsess over our customers' success and honor the legacy knowledge they've built, protecting the time of your senior experts while putting their expertise in everyone's hands.

Precision-Driven: We pursue truth with data, rigor, and transparency. In the industrial world, a wrong answer can be catastrophic. We reject the "good enough" approach of generic AI. Every answer must be verifiable, traceable, and accurate.

Resourcefully Bold: We solve near-impossible problems with ingenuity and speed, delivering outcomes through smart execution and creative thinking. We're scrappy, we're atypical, and we get things done. We believe in making the complex simple and turning constraints into breakthroughs.

Why Now is the Time for Industrial Sales AI

The fundamentals are clear.

Market Forces Driving Industrial AI Adoption

Every year, $4 trillion in industrial products are sold, but 70% of those deals still rely on humans navigating complexity. Industrial AI is the bridge, turning human expertise into scalable, actionable intelligence. With the market projected to grow from $43.6B in 2024 to $153.9B by 2030, the timing has never been better.

The Technical Talent Gap and AI Solutions

Technical talent is stretched thin.

Product complexity is exploding.

Supply chains and nearshoring demand faster decision-making.

And most importantly, the world's industrial teams deserve better than 1990s tools in a 2025 world.

That's why Bardin exists: to deliver industrial AI that sales teams love and engineers trust.

Closing Bardin's Pre-Seed Round: Investors Backing Industrial AI Innovation

To capitalize on this moment and scale our vision, we've united an incredible group of partners through the closing of our pre-seed round. We're proud to welcome new backers and equally grateful to those who've doubled down on their belief in our mission.

Their collective experience across industrial innovation, AI, and go-to-market execution represents the conviction and momentum driving us into this next chapter.

Philippe Suchet: Industrial AI and SaaS Expertise

Our new supporters include Philippe Suchet, a seasoned angel investor with 60+ startups in his portfolio, including seven unicorns like Palantir and DocuSign. As a serial entrepreneur, he co-founded and led two successful SaaS companies and brings rare expertise in GTM strategy and industrial AI investing through his role as partner at Spider Capital having backed companies like Mechanical Orchard, Smartex, Percepto, and more.

Nathan Low: Three Decades of Industrial Innovation

Nathan Low brings nearly three decades of investing experience, having backed 151 companies with 39 successful exits. He's reviewed over 3,000 Israeli startups in the past decade alone, and in the industrial space has supported 20+ hardware and robotics ventures, including M-Systems, Stratasys, and LeoAI.

Ryan Stone: Infrastructure Pioneer and Technical Visionary

Ryan Stone, and the one we credit for this brand revamp trigger, is an entrepreneur and aviation infrastructure pioneer who built the nation's most advanced air-to-ground inflight Wi-Fi network. With experience spanning nuclear engineering at Duke Energy, naval submarine operations, and over 20 patents to his name, Ryan brings deep expertise in building complex technical infrastructure and navigating regulated industrial markets.

Together with our earlier backers, including Elisha Tropper (who built and sold multiple manufacturing companies), Michael Eisenberg (a globally respected venture investor with a two-decade track record of backing transformative companies), Jorrit Steinz (who brings decades of operational experience in B2B sales and supply chain integration), Nate Dalton (our trusted first supporter) and more, their experience building, scaling, and investing in transformative industrial and AI companies strengthens our foundation for this next phase of growth.

Moving Forward: Industrial AI Transforming Industrial Commerce

We know personally, from our family in manufacturing and from our own years in this space, that the industrial world was built by people who took pride in precision, who valued reliability over flash, and who built things that lasted. We honor that legacy while giving it a modern, permanent, and scalable form.

Every customer we work with teaches us something new. Every design partner reveals another layer of complexity we can help untangle. Every piece of feedback makes Bardin stronger.

And so today, we're proud to share our vision for the future of industrial commerce with you. It's ambitious, it's necessary, and it's happening now.

Welcome to Bardin. Industrial AI built for sales, trusted by engineers, and loved by customers.

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