What should it cost? Who can supply it? Where should I negotiate? What's its carbon footprint?

Manufacturers design some parts, buy the rest from suppliers around the world, and assemble them.

We're building Apex, an agentic platform where design, cost and procurement engineers work together to find the best way to make, source and negotiate every part.

What we're building

A seasoned cost engineer, for your whole team.

For buyers and engineers, not just cost experts. Its agents will work from a living database of cost drivers.

Living database

Material rates
Machine costs
Labor rates
Bought-out parts
Discounts
Freight and duty

Should-cost · body

$41.80

Carbon

23.2 kg CO₂e

Material$8.95

Making$26.45

Overhead$4.25

Margin$2.15

Apex Cost

What a part should cost, line by line, and the carbon it carries.

Apex Source

Who can make it, near or far, with landed cost and lead time.

Apex suggests · QB 2 134

Tooling · 1,200 a year
One die for cover and housing
−$4.70$28k less tooling
Material · your Ohio plant
Gray iron, as on their gearbox
−$5.90+4.2 kg
Negotiate · body machining
Quoted 31 min; the model says 22
−$5.409 min a unit

Apex Suggest

Where the money is: tooling, materials and the points to negotiate.

A real run

Watch the agents work.

Replayed step by step from our development build, with its real timings.

Recorded run Sep 23, 2026 · 38.2 s on Apex Inference

The request, in short

Cost the CVR-310 molded cover at 300,000 a year, made in India, in US dollars. The mold, material, press, stations and operators are already chosen.

The answer

$0.2335 a piece at 300,000 a year, made in India

Material$0.1456

Conversion$0.0603

Margin$0.0193

Overhead$0.0084

Every rate names its source. 16 assumptions are flagged, the largest being how many cavities the mold has.

AssistantReads the request5.8 s
AssistantHands the costing to the cost analyst20.3 s
Cost analystChooses the part, region, volume and answers6.3 s
Cost engineRuns the cost model: 84 lines worked out0.12 s
Cost analystWrites up the result13.9 s
AssistantAnswers with the cost and breakdown12.0 s

Language model Cost engine Hand-off

How it works

The AI chooses. The engine computes.

Language models read the request and decide what to run. Every number comes from deterministic cost models and sourced rates, so nothing is made up.

1 · You ask

In plain words

Or with an engineer's precision: part, volume, region, process.

2 · Agents decide

What to run

Read the request and the files
Pick the part, region and volume
Choose the cost model's answers

One typed call

Part, region, volume, choices

No tool accepts a price from a model.

3 · The engine computes

Every line

Runs the part and process models
Reads rates with their sources
Checks every formula's units first

4 · You get the working

$0.2335 a piece

84 lines worked out, 16 assumptions named, 5 exclusions listed.

In the build today Counted from our development build, September 2026.

18Specialist agentsCost, sourcing, savings and data, each with its own tools

115ToolsEach one an agent can call and a person can open

30Cost modelsPart, process, material and overhead templates

13Engineering file typesFrom STEP and DXF to board files and NC programs

1,564Automated testsRun against a real database

0Editable audit rowsThe database itself refuses to change the log

Platform

What every product stands on.

The data behind every number, connections to the systems you run, and security an enterprise can audit.

Apex Data

The living database behind every number, kept current and traced to its source.

Apex Connect

Designed to plug into your ERP, PLM, models, tools and databases.

Controls mapped to SOC 2, ISO 27001
GDPR and CCPA data requests
SSO, two-factor, encryption
An audit log no one can edit
Every agent step traced
Bring your own model

Apex Trust

Designed to be compliant, auditable and observable from day one.

Apex Insight

Reference data we'll keep current: standards, materials, typical machines and cost templates.

Apex Inference

Models we'll run ourselves, if you'd rather not bring your own.

Portrait of Vaibhav, founder of Apex Current

Ten years of cost engineering, turned into software.

Vaibhav Kumar founded Advanced Structures India (ASI), a cost engineering firm that tears products down to work out what they should cost. Today ASI is professionally run and growing worldwide.

With Apex, Vaibhav is turning that decade of know-how into agents your whole team can collaborate with.

Founder of Apex Current and ASILinkedIn

ASI today

40+enterprise clients

6+countries

Automotive
Consumer electronics
Home appliances
Industrial products
Medical devices

From global leaders to fast-growing makers, headquartered across the US, Europe, Japan, Korea and India.