Blank Metal Raises $3M to Accelerate Enterprise AI from Pilot to Production
New Approach Delivers Production AI in 90 Days as Enterprises Seek Faster Path to Value
MINNEAPOLIS — June 24, 2025 — Blank Metal, an AI-native engineering company, today announced $3 million in seed funding to help enterprises overcome a critical challenge: 88% of AI pilots never reach production. The round, led by Rally Ventures, Traction Capital and PurePlay, backs a fundamentally different approach to enterprise AI delivery.
The Enterprise AI Challenge
According to IDC, 88% of enterprise AI initiatives stall in “pilot purgatory”, creating a costly gap between potential and reality. Enterprises invest millions in proof-of-concepts that never scale to production, leaving boards questioning ROI and teams frustrated by lack of progress. Blank Metal addresses this challenge with a 90-day guarantee, demonstrating the company’s confidence in its ability to move enterprise AI from pilot to production.
“Much of the current AI work is being done by consulting companies that were built for a different era—when shipping software was so expensive that it required the kind of extensive deliberation and large teams those companies still deploy today,” said Matt Johnson (MJ), CEO of Blank Metal. “But AI has changed the game. You can now build, test, and iterate so quickly – without sacrificing quality, security, stability – that the traditional approach actually prevents value realization.”
A New Model for a New Era
Blank Metal positions itself as an “anti-consultancy” because AI demands a completely different approach:
Traditional Consultancy Model:
- 6-month strategy phases before building
- Large, leveraged teams incentivized to bill hours
- 18+ month transformation programs
- Proof-of-concepts and pilots that never make it to production
- Success measured in deliverables and power-point decks
Blank Metal Model:
- Time-boxed strategy compressed to days/weeks
- Small senior teams that ship production-ready AI solutions weekly
- 90-day or less production deployments
- < 5% overhead – majority of client budget builds, not burns
- Success measured in business impact
“Realizing the value of AI doesn’t have to take so long and cost so much,” Blank Metal COO Mark Hines explained. “When you can prototype in days and deploy in weeks, the entire delivery model needs to change.”
Proven Results in Production
Recent client engagements demonstrate the effectiveness of this approach:
- A national insurer achieved 20% revenue increase through AI-powered underwriting—deployed to production in 6 weeks
- An enterprise client realized 30% productivity gains from a GenAI platform now running in production across the entire employee base
These aren’t just pilots or POCs—they’re production systems delivering measurable business value.
Why Investors Are Backing This Approach
“We invested because Blank Metal solves the real problem in enterprise AI—the gap between pilot and production,” said Brock Noland, Partner at PurePlay. “Traditional firms are structured for long engagements and billable hours. Blank Metal is structured for rapid value delivery.”
Matt Meents from Traction Capital puts it bluntly, “The era of paying consultants to study your problems is over. The future belongs to partners who build solutions that deliver value, quickly.”
Justin Kaufenberg, Managing Director at Rally Ventures and Blank Metal Co-founder, adds, “This team has proven that exceptional execution and rapid iteration beat perfect planning every time. They understand that in AI, learning happens through shipping, not just strategizing.”
Leadership Built for the AI Era
Blank Metal’s leadership team combines deep enterprise experience with a builder’s mindset: Veterans of GoKart Labs with multiple startup exits: Matt Johnson (CEO) • Mark Hines (COO) • Eric Johnson (CTO) • Elli Rader (CRO) • Teresa Marchek (Head of Product) • Missy Bemm (Head of Client Success).
Accelerating the Path to Value
The funding will help Blank Metal scale its approach by growing the senior engineering team, developing proprietary AI that compresses timelines and protects budgets, and expanding the “90-Day Production Guarantee” to more enterprises.
“We understand the pressure enterprises face,” MJ said. “Boards want to see AI delivering value, not consuming resources. Teams want to build solutions, not attend steering committees. We built Blank Metal for companies ready to move from idea(s) to production.”
Don’t just talk about AI, ship it,” has become the company’s rallying cry—not as a criticism of strategy and planning, but as recognition that AI’s value comes from iteration in production, not perfection in pilot.