June 25 (Reuters) - Software and robotics startup Bright

Machines raised $106 million in a Series C funding round that

included Nvidia ( NVDA ) and Microsoft ( MSFT ) as investors,

the company said on Tuesday.

The San Francisco-based company makes equipment and software

that helps automate a range of manufacturing tasks through the

use of artificial intelligence and machine learning.

Other investors in the Series C funding round included

venture capital firm Eclipse Ventures, robotics maker Jabil ( JBL )

and BlackRock ( BLK ). Bright Machines raised $20

million in debt from J.P. Morgan as well.

Bright Machines plans to deploy nearly all of the cash it

raised toward its engineering effort, which is working on

robotics, computer vision and other automation problems, CEO

Lior Susan said in an interview.

The cash will help introduce "a faster and better version of

our platform," Susan said.

The company's goal is to eventually allow an engineer to

design a product inside of the Bright Machines environment and

"press a button" to have a robotic system thousands of miles

away manufacture the object, Susan said.

One of the significant use cases is constructing AI server

hardware made by the likes of Nvidia ( NVDA ). Bright Machines tools can

help make the manufacturing process of the assembled system more

efficient, potentially shaving off weeks or months from the

build time, by replacing manual labor with robots and software.

"If I can give Nvidia ( NVDA ) a month faster (way) to introduce a

new product ... it's worth - in this AI background - so many

billions of dollars," Susan said.

Building AI servers is a fast-growing market for Bright

Machines, with the company seeing "an insane amount of demand,"

Susan said.

The company's tools can also build a range of other

electronics such as mobile phones.