Some ideas take forty years and a grandson to be born.
Built on the shop floor, for the people who work the shop floor.
The opportunity
Surface preparation is a critical function across nearly every industry that finishes a physical product. The global market for surface preparation equipment and abrasives exceeds fourteen billion dollars annually, serving automotive refinishing, aerospace, marine, industrial manufacturing, and woodworking.
Our initial focus is automotive refinishing. The global automotive refinish industry reached approximately $13.9 billion in 2026 and is projected to grow at roughly five to six percent annually through 2030. That growth is being driven by rising average vehicle age, EV-related repair complexity, OEM standards that keep tightening, and persistent skilled-labor shortages in collision repair. Existing methods rely heavily on technique developed over years of hands-on experience, which limits how quickly the work can be taught, standardized, or scaled.
That gap, between the artisan-level skill the work demands and the consistent output the market needs, is what we are building for.
How it started
AutoPlane began on the shop floor.
Most painters call themselves artists for a reason, and Christopher Bleak has always seen automotive paintwork that way. He never went through formal training — almost everything he knows, he taught himself, over forty years of jobs in real shops. That self-taught instinct mattered. It's what let him keep asking: why are we doing it this way? The breakthrough came when his own work changed because of AutoPlane. Not slightly — dramatically. That's when he knew it had to be shared.
What started as one craftsman's curiosity became prototypes, shop testing, a patent-pending technology — and a whole heap of potential still ahead.
The team
Christopher Bleak, Co-Founder
Christopher is an artist by instinct. Long before AutoPlane, he was inventing, modifying, and improving the things around him. He owned and operated automotive body and repair shops in the region for many years, building a deep career in collision repair, mechanical work, and custom finishing. Outside of the shop, he spent years designing and building one-of-a-kind custom wood furniture sold in Pine, Arizona. His view of all of it was the same: every piece is its own thing, and the work deserves the care of an artist.
Along the way, he sat as a pupil in seminars hosted by Jon Kosmoski of House of Kolor, an experience that shaped his thinking about automotive paintwork as a discipline of artistry, not just trade.
His work has always been driven by the same instinct: solve the problem in front of you and help the person who needs it. In the trades, that often meant doing the extra work, charging less than the job was worth, or helping people who had no easy way to pay him back.
AutoPlane comes from that same place. It is not just an invention built for a market. It is a tool born from years of trying to make difficult work easier for the people doing it.
Dante Bernal, Co-Founder
Dante leads AutoPlane's product strategy, business development, and commercialization. He has helped move the company from early prototypes into shop validation, customer discovery, legal preparation, and early commercial traction.
His focus is turning the invention into a repeatable business: refining the product, building the sales process, organizing field feedback, and preparing AutoPlane for broader market entry.
Looking ahead
AutoPlane is building surface preparation technology for the people who do the work.
Our goal is simple: give technicians more control, help shops create more consistent results, and improve the process behind high-quality finishing.
Patent Pending. More is coming.