Blank Metal—it’s not a rock band; it’s a new AI-native software engineering company, but this startup’s founders and investors read like a troupe of superstars…in Minnesota tech.

Formed by former leaders of GoKart Labs, a digital agency that landed on every hot startup list in the 2010s before being acquired in 2019 by West Monroe, Blank Metal on Tuesday announced a $3 million seed round co-led by Twin Cities VCs Rally Ventures managing director Justin Kaufenberg (co-founder of Sports Engine), Traction Capital’s Matt Meents (co-founder of Yardstik and Magnet 360), and Pure Play Partners’ Brock Noland (co-founder of phData).

“We’ve all been having similar conversations about how AI is going to change everything and legacy consultancies can’t change fast enough. Enterprise consulting needs to be fundamentally rewritten,” says Matt “MJ” Johnson, CEO of Blank Metal, which was incubated within Rally Ventures, where specialties include enterprise software and fintech. Blank Metal’s focus industries will include fintech, health care, and education to start.

Johnson points to a recent statistic by research firm IDC that finds 88% of enterprise AI initiatives stall in “pilot purgatory,” meaning most proof of concepts never scale to production. Blank Metal is offering a 90-day guarantee, “from pilot to production.”

Blank Metal is even building its own AI tool called Shippy, to deliver its work. “We want clients to feel the AI in the delivery of our work,” Johnson says.

The new firm positions itself as an “anti-consultancy.” Johnson explains: “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. 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.”

Investors say they gravitated to Blank Metal’s speed and practical approach. “The era of paying consultants to study your problems is over,” Traction Capital’s Meents said in a statement. “The future belongs to partners who build solutions that deliver value, quickly.”

Blank Metal’s leaders are startup veterans with multiple exits including Mark Hines, Eric Johnson, Elli Rader, Teresa Marchek and Missy Bemm. The company, which quietly began working on its first client project two months ago, has already hired four engineers. Johnson says he expects to staff up to around 20 by the end of 2025. So far, everyone on the team is Minneapolis based with an office at Riverplace.

“We’ve found amazing talent in Minneapolis,” Johnson says. Whether or not the firm will go beyond the state to hire or expand “is an emerging question. We really do want to be a center of AI influence in Minneapolis.”