Image credit: Ethereal Machines
Every rocket engine, jet turbine and chip-making tool starts life as a block of metal — and before any of those parts exist, some other machine has to carve them with near-impossible precision. For decades, Indian factories have had to import that machine. A Bengaluru company decided to build it instead.
The company is Ethereal Machines, founded in 2014 by Kaushik Mudda and Navin Jain — two electrical engineering graduates of RV College of Engineering who built their first CNC machine as students because they could not afford to buy one. Twelve years later, Ethereal Machines designs, builds and operates its own proprietary multi-axis CNC machines, and says it holds sub-10-micron accuracy at production scale — a standard the company claims is a first for Indian manufacturing.
Nimbus: a 5-axis CNC engineered end to end in Bengaluru
The flagship is Nimbus, a 5-axis CNC machining platform that Ethereal Machines designed, built and tested under one roof in Bengaluru. While a conventional 3-axis CNC moves a cutting tool along three directions — left-right, forward-back and up-down — Nimbus adds two rotary axes: the B-axis tilts from −50° to +110° and the C-axis rotates a full 360°, so complex parts can be carved in a single setup instead of being re-fixtured again and again.
The official spec sheet is uncompromising: 4-micron linear positioning, 5 arc-second rotary accuracy, a Ø400 mm × 200 mm work envelope, a 12,000 RPM spindle, 48 m/min rapid traverse — and a contactless laser tool setter that verifies every cutter’s length, diameter, wear and runout at each tool change. It cuts aluminium, steel, titanium, Inconel and copper, and handles metals up to 65 HRC — the hardened territory of rocket engine components and chip-making equipment.
4 microns, verified by the machine itself
The number that matters is 4 microns — roughly one-twentieth the width of a human hair. According to the company, Nimbus achieves it through on-axis feedback: high-resolution linear scales on the X, Y and Z axes and dedicated rotary encoders on both the B and C axes, detecting and compensating tiny positioning errors in real time. Ethereal Machines’ own framing: the numbers on the brochure match the numbers on the QC report.
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Ethereal Machines does not sell the Nimbus. The machine, the company says, is its assurance of Indian-engineered precision — the way to make customers believe a part milled in Peenya is every bit as good as one milled in Germany.
Machining as a service, at global standards
Instead of selling machines, Ethereal Machines sells capacity: a Machining-as-a-Service model supplying high-precision components to aerospace, defence, healthcare, semiconductor and consumer-electronics clients. It operates what it calls India’s first fully automated smart manufacturing unit in Peenya, Bengaluru — running round the clock across three shifts.
The model is working. Since its $13 million Series A in June 2024, the company says its machining-as-a-service revenue has grown 3x year over year while production capacity has expanded 10x. The Economic Times reports that nearly 70% of revenue now comes from exports, with clients across the US, UK and Europe and early inroads into Southeast Asia and Japan.
$28.5 million to scale the precision stack
In June 2026, Ethereal Machines raised a $28.5 million Series B led by Avataar Ventures, with Peak XV Partners and other investors joining. The capital is earmarked for a 300,000 sq ft mega-factory on the outskirts of Bengaluru — the company has signed an MoU with the Government of Karnataka — expected to create more than 2,000 jobs. Also on the roadmap: India’s first domestically developed CNC controller, an expansion of Vesper, its AI-driven factory software, and new teams in the US and Europe.
From a student-built machine that cost a fraction of the market price to a five-axis platform holding four-micron tolerances for aerospace customers — Ethereal Machines is making the case that world-class precision manufacturing can be engineered under one roof in India.
