New seed funding will enable Cadstrom to fuel development of its AI-driven verification tools that are said to streamline validation of electronic hardware designs.
MONTRÉAL—Cadstrom, founded in 2023 by Margot Blouin and Scott Bright, is the developer of an AI system that is said to enable electrical engineers “to design electronic devices correctly on the first try.”
Core to Cadstrom’s approach is its proprietary Sigma Engine, which leverages a first-principles understanding of physics, electronics, and generative AI to identify mistakes while automatically validating complex designs. As a result, it can help cut development costs, accelerate GTM timelines, and shorten design cycles up to 66 percent by eliminating respins, the company said in a release.
“We founded Cadstrom to address the reality that most electronics designs require several time-consuming revisions, and the problem is getting worse as electronics, AI, and connectivity becomes increasingly ubiquitous,” said Margot Blouin, founder and CEO of Cadstrom, in the release. “Our vision is one where every engineer can achieve robust designs on their first build and get to market faster.”
Cadstrom recently raised $6.8 million in a seed funding round led by Bison Ventures. The round also included participation from Innovation Endeavors and AI2 Incubator, which previously invested $650,000 in a pre-seed round, according to the release.
The company will use the new capital to fuel the development of its AI-driven verification tools that identify errors, oversights, and omissions, and “automatically validate the most complex designs,” the company said. It will also expand its design and partner testing program, which is said to currently include “several market-leading product development and design consulting agencies in the United States.” The goal is to directly serve professional engineers, the company said.
“This funding represents a critical milestone for our team, and we’re excited to put the capital to work to further develop our automated verification tools that detect and address the most common issues that electrical engineers face,” Blouin said.
As the electronics industry has grown, so has demand for printed circuit boards (PCBs), which serve as the foundation for modern electronic products and their trillion-dollar industries. While PCBs have grown increasingly complex, their design remains a largely manual process prone to errors and delays, according to Cadstrom
The company said the average printed circuit board undergoes three “respins,” or reconfigurations of its design, due to unanticipated electrical design mistakes, requirements changes, or other manufacturing realities. These can add more than $100,000 to development costs and delay a PCB’s production timeline by a whopping six months. The expense and delay are often further exacerbated by supply-chain issues and inconsistent component availability. Moreover, field failures and recalls cause severe damage to market confidence and product competitiveness.
“Legacy verification tools are inconsistent, time-consuming, and ineffective; electrical engineers say it’s inevitably faster and easier today to plan for respin iterations than waste time and effort attempting complete validation with the solutions currently on the market,” Cadstrom stated in the release.
Bright previously cofounded Synapse Product Development (now a part of Capgemini Invent) and has three decades of experience in building innovative electrical products for the likes of NASA, Disney, and Philips. Blouin, who previously served as founding product manager for Microsoft’s Azure Quantum, spent seven years researching and developing the Sigma Engine, aiming to address the lack of tools assisting in design verification—a frustrating market gap she reportedly discovered herself while building electronic devices.
“Cadstrom’s approach is bringing unprecedented progress to the testing, inspection, and certification market,” said Tom Biegala, founding partner at Bison Ventures, in the release. “Margot and Scott built the product they desperately needed as hardware engineers. By improving one of the most tedious parts of PCB development, Cadstrom helps engineers be more productive and bring validated hardware to market at remarkable speeds. This is in stark contrast to tools seeking to replace engineers with ineffective AI.”