Stockholm-based Encube Technologies AB, an artificial intelligence-driven visual engineering collaboration startup, launched today with $23 million in funding to expand its market presence across the United States and the European Union and build out its AI platform.

Swedish investment firm Kinnevik, Promus Ventures and Inventure provided backing for the round.

Founded in late 2021 by former Sandvik AB and Aker ASA executive Hugo Nordell and Skype and Klarna veteran Johnny Bigert, Encube aims to accelerate hardware development through a collaborative software platform that can reason through engineering challenges.

According to the company, 80% of a product’s cost is determined once the design is finalized. Design decisions directly affect manufacturing costs and carbon footprint, meaning the future of a project is consolidated early in its lifecycle.

Encube’s AI-driven platform embeds manufacturing data across numerous hardware types, allowing teams to assess how design changes over time could introduce downstream issues, increase complexity or create opportunities for simplification.

Nordell, now chief executive of Encube, said his experience in industry work revealed how quickly production costs can spiral when early design choices fail to consider manufacturing realities. Issues arise because it is not always straightforward to predict how a design will impact manufacturing costs in the early stages; these effects typically become apparent only once production starts.

“Hardware development is a balancing act between how a product looks, functions and what it costs to produce,” added Nordell.

By bringing product and manufacturing engineers together in the collaboration phase, along with AI to simulate the functions of changes and how they will affect production, Encube’s solution provides a view of how changes will affect the product lifecycle. The platform’s underlying AI engine can also describe how changes will affect later production costs in easy-to-understand insights for less technical users.

Unlike traditional computer-aided design and product lifecycle management tools, Encube’s system seeks to integrate manufacturing insights early in design. Instead of relying on manual cost simulations, the platform’s AI can run validation for cost reduction choices during design iterations.

“AI is fundamentally transforming how products are designed, enabling engineering teams to simulate, iterate and collaborate at unprecedented speed,” said Tatiana Shalalvand, investment director at Kinnevik.

Encube’s platform has been tested and validated in research and development programs with a wide range of industry partners, including automotive giant Volvo Group and space systems manufacturer RUAG Group’s Beyond Gravity. Many partners reported time-to-market reductions of up to 50%, with production cost savings of 20% to 30% and doubled engineering productivity.

“We rely entirely on third parties to manufacture our robots,” said Mattias Vanberg, director of development at Cognibotics AB, an advanced industrial robotics company. “Encube makes it much easier for us to uncover and mitigate product risk early in development together with our suppliers and customers.”

Encube said it intends to help rebuild and strengthen European industrial competitiveness. With this new financing, the company will expand its commercial footprint across Europe and the U.S., while positioning itself to benefit from the current trend of AI adoption.

Image: Encube