Bloom just raised $3.6 million to stop being just a car-parts matchmaker.
The Detroit startup built a platform that connects mobility companies with U.S.-based manufacturers. It's now widening that scope to serve drone and robotics companies as well. The platform matches hardware makers with domestic manufacturers, shippers, and other suppliers. The new $3.6 million round backs that expansion.
Bloom's pitch invokes Alibaba, the Chinese marketplace giant that made it easy for Western buyers to find overseas factories. The irony: Bloom sells the opposite, a way to find manufacturers without touching China's supply chain at all. That shift makes sense, since drone and robotics makers increasingly face pressure, often tied to export-control and national-security rules, to source domestically rather than overseas.
Calling a $3.6 million seed-stage company the next Alibaba is premature. Alibaba took two decades and a trillion dollars in scale to earn that name.