2023年，当贾斯汀·科斯米德斯（Justin Kosmides）共同创立Bloom时，他的目标是打造一家能够拯救出行行业的“救世主”公司。他目睹过许多电动自行车和电动滑板车公司因无法或不愿将物流、制造或供应链建设等最棘手的问题外包而失败。他希望能说服那些幸存下来的企业以及新进入者，将这部分工作交给Bloom处理。
When Justin Kosmides co-founded Bloom in 2023, his goal was to create a savior for the mobility industry. He had seen many e-bike and e-scooter companies fail because of an inability — or an unwillingness — to outsource some of the hardest problems, like logistics, manufacturing, or building a supply chain. He wanted to convince survivors and new entrants to let Bloom handle that work for them.
随后，唐纳德·特朗普（Donald Trump）再次当选，并开始对数十个国家征收高额关税，部分目的是推动美国制造业复苏。这进一步加速了美国本已升温的硬件行业，而突然间，寻求加强本土供应链的不再仅仅是出行公司。机器人初创企业、无人机制造商以及更多类型的企业也开始涌现。
Then Donald Trump got re-elected and started shotgun-blasting tariffs on dozens of countries, partially to jump-start U.S. manufacturing. This accelerated a hardware scene that was already heating up in this country and, suddenly, it was more than just mobility companies looking to beef up their domestic supply chain. Robotics startups, drone-makers, and many more started to pop up.
这对总部位于底特律的Bloom来说是一个机遇，但要抓住这个机会，这家初创公司不得不部分重塑自身。最初计划中，Bloom本应承担一些复杂且幕后性质的任务，但后来它转向了纯粹的电商平台模式，专注于连接买家和卖家。如今，Bloom主要致力于开发供应链AI代理工具，供客户使用以寻找特定类型的供应商、零部件或制造与工程服务。
That was an opportunity for Bloom, which is based in Detroit, but to tackle it, the startup had to partially reinvent itself. Instead of performing some of those harder, behind-the-scenes tasks, which was a big part of the original plan, Bloom shifted to a pure marketplace model, in which it connects buyers and sellers. It’s now focused on making, essentially, supply chain AI agents that Bloom’s customers use to find specific types of suppliers, parts, or manufacturing and engineering services.
这种转型减缓了Bloom的融资计划。但截至目前，该公司已为超过140家企业促成超过2000次匹配，并渴望实现更快增长。在今年早些时候的一次采访中，Bloom首席执行官科斯米德斯表示，他的初创公司类似于阿里巴巴在中国打造的AI驱动版模式——即创建一个面向合同制造商的交易平台。
The reinvention slowed Bloom’s fundraising plans. But the company has now made over 2,000 matches for more than 140 companies, and it wants grow faster. In an interview earlier this year, Kosmides, who is Bloom’s CEO, said his startup is like AI-driven version of Alibaba did in China, where it created a marketplace for contract manufacturers.
投资者们终于开始青睐这家公司了。周三，Bloom宣布完成了360万美元的种子轮融资，领投方为专注于市场领域投资的SNAK Venture Partners。其他参与投资的机构还包括专注于美国中部各州早期项目的Flyover Capital，以及深科技投资公司Mana Ventures。本地投资方则包括底特律风险投资合伙公司、Invest Detroit Ventures以及密歇根户外创新基金。
Investors are finally buying in. On Wednesday, Bloom announced a $3.6 million seed round led by SNAK Venture Partners, a marketplace-focused investment firm. Also joining were Flyover Capital (an early stage investor that focuses on flyover states), and deep tech firm Mana Ventures. Local backers included Detroit Venture Partners, Invest Detroit Ventures, and the Michigan Outdoor Innovation Fund.
科斯米德斯在采访中显得如释重负，他表示：“能完成融资并重新专注于公司建设，我感到非常兴奋。”去年4月，在Bloom进行转型初期阶段时，SNAK便与其首次接洽。当时时机尚早，以至于这家投资机构最终放弃了参与该公司的前种子轮融资的机会。
Kosmides, sounding relieved, said in the interview that he’s “excited to be done with fundraising and get to back to building.”SNAK first met with Bloom in April of last year, in the early stages of this reinvention. So early, in fact, that the firm passed on the chance to invest in the startup’s pre-seed round.
“我们欣赏这位创始人及其商业理念，但依然决定不投资：我们希望看到更多业务增长迹象，”SNAK在一篇博客文章中写道，“我们直截了当地说明了这一点，并持续关注这家公司的发展。”在Bloom逐步转型为一家以软件为核心的企业过程中，双方始终保持着联系。截至今年5月，Bloom在五个月内实现的营收已相当于2025年全年水平。SNAK还指出，其平台上的会员数量增长了五倍，且用户流失率极低——即很少有客户选择退订服务。
“We liked the founder and the thesis and passed anyway: we wanted to see more traction,” the firm wrote in a blog post. “We said so plainly and kept tracking the company.”Bloom kept in touch with SNAK as it worked through becoming a more software-focused startup. By May of this year, Bloom had made as much revenue in five months as it did in all of 2025. SNAK also said the number of memberships on its platform had grown fivefold “with low churn,” meaning few customers were canceling.
“我们想借此强调：错过一家初创企业的前种子轮融资，并不意味着永远失去投资机会。我们很幸运拥有明确的投资方向，这使我们能够持续关注少数具有潜力的早期企业，并随着时间推移与其建立长期合作关系，”SNAK在文中补充道。
“This is meant to reiterate that for us, a pass on pre-seed is not always a pass forever. We are fortunate to have a super focused thesis that allows us to track a small set of interesting early stage companies and build a relationship over time,” the firm wrote.
科斯米德斯指出，对于像Bloom这样的初创企业而言，当前的融资环境相当残酷。在主流人工智能模型不断升级迭代的背景下，要想向投资者证明自身价值实属不易。
Kosmides said the fundraising scene has been a bit ruthless for startups like Bloom. Proving your value to investors in a world where the leading AI models keep improving can be an uphill battle.
“要找到真正愿意签署条款清单（term sheet）的投资者，而不是仅仅浏览条款清单的投资者，正变得越来越难，”他说。“这只是我们当前所处的新纪元，在这个时代，每个人都在试图辨别哪些是真实的、哪些不是，以及该投资什么。”
“To find investors to actually write a term sheet, not follow one, is getting harder and harder,” he said. “That’s just this new era that we’re in, with everyone trying to figure out what’s real and what’s not, what to invest in.”
科斯米德斯表示，布卢姆确实也在争取其他条款清单。但由资深零售高管索尼娅·纳加尔创立的SNAK，正是“你希望加入阵营”的合作伙伴，以便“打造一个有望定义整个品类的移动出行、无人机及各类硬件产品市场”。布卢姆的平台涵盖了供应商关系的双方。一些客户使用该平台发布合同机会，而另一些客户则用它来竞标这些机会。布卢姆在其平台上统一处理报价、订单和支付流程，目前还帮助公司匹配能够承担合同制造、组装、设计与工程、货运、仓储、维修，甚至危险品运输的供应商。
Bloom did court other term sheets, Kosmides said. But SNAK, which was founded by longtime retail executive Sonia Nagar, is “who you want in your camp” to “build a hopefully category-defining marketplace for mobility, and drones, and all this hardware.”Bloom’s platform handles both sides of a supplier relationship. Some customers use the platform to post contract opportunities, while others use it to bid on those opportunities. Bloom handles quoting, booking, and payment all on its platform, and it now helps match companies with suppliers that can do contract manufacturing, assembly, design and engineering, freight, warehousing, repairs, and even hazardous-materials shipping.
科斯米德斯说：“像Fictiv、Xometry、MacroFab等零部件市场平台的朋友们，在过去确实是寻找特定零部件的绝佳平台。但如果你是XYZ无人机公司或一家电动摩托车公司，需要找到能满足所有这些要求的供应商，并让他们全部参与竞标，这比寻找一个CNC加工零件要复杂得多。”让这一系统高效运作是布卢姆重塑自身业务的关键，而这也涉及对平台上每家供应商大量数据的整合。
“Our friends at the parts marketplaces like Fictiv, Xometry, MacroFab and others are really good yesteryear marketplaces for finding one particular part,” Kosmides said. “But when you’re XYZ Drone Company, or an electric motorcycle company, and you need to find a provider that meets all these requirements have them all bid on this opportunity, that’s a lot more complicated than finding a CNC part.”Making this system work well is a big part Bloom’s reinvention, and it involved ingesting a lot of data about each provider on the platform.
其中许多数据是公开信息——例如公司网站上的自我介绍。但科斯米德斯表示，约有30%到40%的数据直接来自这些公司本身。再加上这家初创企业在吸纳更多客户和促成更多匹配过程中生成的数据，就构成了布卢姆的核心优势。
A lot of that was public data — how a company describes itself on its website, for instance. But around 30-40% of that data is coming directly from the companies, Kosmides said. Add in the data being generated as the startup onboards more customers and makes more matches, and you have Bloom’s edge, he said.
“你可以构建出最疯狂的模型来抓取数据，但永远也达不到那样的准确性，”他说。“我们从手动预订服务开始，然后在逐步构建供应商网络、处理越来越多交易的过程中，一层层地加入各种组件，并不断加深理解，因此系统只会变得越来越好。”Kosmides认为，这种方式是建立供应商关系的更佳途径，也有助于初创公司更容易地起步。同时，他还认为Bloom的平台将为那些可能没有庞大营销预算或销售团队的小型制造商创造机会。
“You can build the craziest model for scraping data but you would never get to that accuracy,” he said. “We started with manually booking services, and then built in layers and pieces and understanding as we built up the provider network, as we built out more and more transactions, and so it’s only getting better and better.”Kosmides believes this is all a better way to strike up supplier relationships, and that it also makes it easier for startups to get off the ground. But he also thinks Bloom’s platform will help create opportunities small manufacturers who may not have big marketing budgets or sales teams.
他举了密歇根州一家合同制造商的例子：在开始与Bloom合作之前，这家公司接的都是些零散活计，比如翻新Nest恒温器和Bird电动滑板车，或者为Chick-fil-A制作展示架。而如今的这家公司，已经开始竞标无人机组装合同了。
He gave an example of one Michigan-based contract manufacturer that, until it started working with Bloom, was taking on odd jobs like refurbishing Nest thermostats and Bird scooters, or working with Chick-fil-A displays. That same company is now bidding on drone assembly contracts.
“我认为美国制造业真正缺失的，正是发现机会和进行匹配的能力，”他说。“这种能力在电子平台上根本不存在。”
“The ability to discover, and the ability to do matchmaking, that is what I think is truly missing” from U.S. manufacturing, he said. “That just doesn’t exist electronically.”