Makelab CEO Christina Perla details AI-driven Makelab OS and 5x facility expansion in Brooklyn

Makelab CEO Christina Perla has outlined the company’s accelerated growth strategy, centered on the development of an AI-powered operating system dubbed Makelab OS. Speaking to TCT at RAPID + TCT in Boston, Perla revealed that the service bureau is 39 days away from moving into a new South Brooklyn facility five times the size of its current Manhattan site, equipped with two freight elevators and five indoor loading bays at a lower cost. The expansion follows a deliberate refocusing of Perla’s time after stepping back from board roles at Women in 3D Printing and the Industrial Designers Society of America, as well as handing over hosting duties for the Talking Design and Engineering podcast to Makelab’s Head of Manufacturing Engineering. Perla described applying an impact-effort matrix to her commitments, cutting low-impact activities to concentrate on what was already working for the business.

This move reflects a broader trend in the AM service bureau segment, where operational software and facility scale are becoming competitive differentiators. Makelab OS, built using AI, aims to automate quoting, production scheduling, and quality tracking — addressing the chronic inefficiency in order-to-delivery workflows that plagues many print-on-demand shops. The company competes with other US-based service bureaus like Fictiv, Xometry, and Protolabs, but its focus on design-led, high-touch service for industrial designers and engineers positions it in a narrower, higher-margin niche. The 5x facility expansion signals that Makelab is betting on volume growth from repeat customers rather than one-off prototypes, a shift that aligns with the industry’s maturation from prototyping to production services.

For Makelab, the practical challenge is execution: scaling from a single Manhattan site to a much larger Brooklyn operation while maintaining quality and turnaround times. The AI-driven OS must deliver real throughput gains, not just dashboard optics. Buyers evaluating Makelab should watch whether the new facility and software stack actually reduce lead times and pricing variance — the two pain points that keep many engineers from committing to service bureaus for production runs.