Three former SpaceX engineers are applying lessons from rocket engine production to a different industrial problem: how to make steel infrastructure parts with fewer bottlenecks and more automation. Their startup, 1872, is building a robotic factory intended to automate most of the steel fabrication process for key components by 2027.
From rocket engines to steel fabrication
1872 officially launched on July 22 with a ribbon-cutting ceremony at its Factory One facility in Cincinnati, Ohio. The company was founded by Dan Summers, Brian Mongilio, and Michael Grant, all of whom previously worked at SpaceX.
Summers, now CEO of 1872, oversaw the engineering team that integrated and fabricated the Raptor engines used by the Super Heavy booster rocket for SpaceX’s Starship launch system. At SpaceX, the Raptor team relied on what Summers described as “intelligent software” to track and manage the physical manufacturing of engine hardware.
That experience shapes 1872’s approach. The company is not just trying to install robots on a factory floor. It is trying to build software that can understand what needs to be made, plan how to make it, and coordinate machines and materials through production.
“We had software engineers that were working with our hardware engineers to not only develop the engine but to develop the system that would build the engine,” Summers told Ars. “Every engine was so different, and we were pushing so much change through the system that without that software, it would have been impossible to know what we needed to build, what we actually built, or how we were going to build it.”
Summers said that helped the Raptor team move from a heavily instrumented first full-scale concept to a production version within three years. He contrasted that with a typical jet engine development life cycle that can exceed two decades.
Why 1872 is starting with steel skids
The company’s first product focus is the steel skid: a rectangular steel frame that can serve as a moveable foundation for modular buildings. 1872 aims to supply customers working on AI data centers or small modular nuclear reactors.
The choice is deliberate. Summers described steel skids as “lower precision components” compared with aerospace-grade rocket parts. That makes them a practical starting point for automation because the process can tolerate more room for error while still producing a useful infrastructure component.
“We’re starting with more of the less sexy components on the critical infrastructure side that are really important to our ability to build stuff, and that consume a ton of skilled labor and resources,” Summers said.
The broader pressure behind the effort is labor. Industry associations have warned that the United States faces a shortage of skilled workers needed to support construction of AI data centers, semiconductor fabs, automotive factories, and shipyards.
The American Welding Society estimates that the United States will need 320,500 new welding professionals by 2029 because of retirements from an aging workforce and rising demand for welding work. The source also notes that the Trump administration’s tightening restrictions on legal immigration and crackdown on undocumented immigration are further limiting options for welding-intensive industries such as shipbuilding.
“The problem that we are trying to solve is how do we build more things with a decreasing pool of skilled labor to do it with, and this is a good place to start in terms of implementing automation,” Summers said.
Robots can weld, but assembly is the larger constraint
1872 began by using human workers to define a manual process for producing finished skids. At the same time, it has been integrating technologies such as robotic arms for automated welding through a partnership with the Columbus-based company Path Robotics.
Arc welding works by creating an electric arc between an electrode stick or wire and metal material. The heat melts metal at a joint between two parts, allowing those parts to bond after the molten metal solidifies.
Path Robotics claims its robots typically reach between 95 and 100 percent on first-pass yields for arc welding. That means the share of parts passing quality inspection the first time, without rework or scrap.
The robots also spend more of their working time actively welding. According to the source, robotic arms spend 70 percent of their working time with the arc on, while human workers have arc-on time of 10 to 12 percent because they must spend more time aligning and repositioning metal parts or adjusting tools.
Path Robotics says that efficiency can reduce welding costs by 85 percent. Its workstation can perform welding for about $0.12 per weld inch, compared with about $0.78 per weld inch for manual welding by hand.
Still, welding is not the only issue. Summers explained that welding a skid can take two to four hours, while assembling all the cut parts before welding can take four to five days. That makes the upstream flow of parts a major target for automation.
“The whole name of the game is how do we keep that machine fed,” he said.
The software layer: Architect and Conductor
1872’s website describes a heavily automated manufacturing process in which customers’ digital design files are fed into an AI-driven software system. That system would create and schedule a complete manufacturing plan for steel components, including pricing and sourcing materials.
Summers referred to that planning layer as “Architect.” It would then hand off execution to a “Conductor,” which would coordinate material movement and robotic machines on the factory floor.
That coordination could include autonomous vehicles moving materials and parts between workstations. It could also include robotic arms traveling on rails along a production line.
“Our differentiator is our ability to take robotic systems that are either built by us or built by partners like Path Robotics, pull them into a single system and orchestrate them together in a way in which you can really achieve a seamless operation,” Summers told Ars.
The company’s view of autonomy is pragmatic rather than absolute. Summers said 1872 is building toward autonomy, but may stop short of full autonomy if the extra effort no longer pays off.
“We’re building towards autonomy, but we’re not necessarily building in a dogmatic fashion towards full autonomy,” Dan Summers, CEO of 1872, told Ars. “We may achieve 80 percent autonomous operations, and we may decide that it makes sense to stop there because there’s just diminishing returns to go to full 100 percent.”
Funding the first factory
1872 has received $15 million in seed funding from private funds advised by The O.H.I.O. Fund, an investment advisory firm. Summers said that funding should ideally be enough to “launch Factory 1, build out the automation software and hardware tech stack, and become profitable.”
The company may later expand its automation production process beyond steel skids to structural frames and enclosures. For now, the central test is whether 1872 can connect AI-driven planning, robotic welding, material handling, and factory execution into a production system that can make critical steel components with less dependence on scarce skilled labor.