Unveiling The Grid: PCBs made in America, twice as fast as Shenzhen

CircuitHub introduces The Grid, an automated electronics factory in Massachusetts designed to make varied, small-batch circuit-board orders economically in the United States. Conventional production lines suit huge runs of one product, while most hardware teams need prototypes, modest quantities, and frequent design revisions; each change traditionally requires costly setup, making automation difficult. The Grid instead moves boards between solder-paste printing, component placement, reflow, soldering, and inspection on levitating carriers. Software combining learned models, AI agents, and optimization schedules each board’s route, eliminating per-design changeovers. This lets the same equipment handle a hundred different designs or a hundred copies of one, for prototypes as well as production. The company says the system has operated for five years and serves startups and large firms, including an EV maker and an AI lab.

A price-and-delivery comparison illustrates the trade-off: five assembled four-layer motor-controller boards, each with 118 components, cost $630 and arrive in four days from Massachusetts. A typical Shenzhen quick-turn supplier costs about $465 after shipping and US tariffs, with median delivery of nine days. The US option therefore costs roughly $165 more but saves five days and avoids customs exposure. CircuitHub says it has shipped more than 2.2 million boards and placed over 150 million parts, with annual Grid output worth tens of millions of dollars. Demand exceeds current capacity; the company plans to expand capacity fivefold this year and increase it substantially again in 2027, aiming to make hardware manufacturing as fast as design.