Quilter raises $10M to build the "compiler" for circuit boards

Quilter raises $10M led by Benchmark to build an AI "compiler" for circuit boards, and is free to use in open beta.

TL;DR

Quilter, an AI company building generative circuit board design software, announces its Series A led by Benchmark with participation from Coatue and existing investors, and welcomes Eric Vishria of Benchmark to the Board.

The world is experiencing a renaissance of advanced hardware and physical technology, but designing the electronics that power them is still slow and expensive. Quilter is accelerating R&D for electronics companies by harnessing AI to fully automate circuit board design. Quilter is now available to try for free in open beta – and is hiring!

Designing electronics is (still) slow and expensive

It has never been a more exciting time to build physical products. The last ten years of innovation in hardware have produced generational achievements like autonomous vehicles, commercial space access, spatial computing, and the GPUs powering the age of AI. The next ten years are poised to produce further breakthroughs in biotechnology, nuclear energy, and defense.

But despite these incredible accomplishments, the process of designing the electronics that power these products is still quite difficult; even worse, it’s slow. After decades of automation efforts, the task of translating an electrical architecture (a “schematic”) into a manufacturable circuit board design remains stubbornly manual, tedious, and error prone. 

While it is common today for electronics companies to order and receive new PCB prototypes from halfway around the world in 24-48 hours, they are still spending weeks or even months of high-value engineering time to create those designs in the first place. 

Compared to their counterparts in software, electrical engineers are effectively still “compiling code” by hand. If we are to realize the most compelling visions for the future of physical computing, this has to change.

Quilter is building a compiler for circuit boards

At Quilter, our mission is to build a “compiler for circuit boards”, and accelerate innovation in electronics by enabling companies to iterate 10x faster than they could before.

Although most electrical engineers have experimented with design automation tools (like autorouters), most quickly learn that they are challenging to configure, rarely finish the job, and cost more time to use than they save. Why? Existing automation tools are incapable of doing what human designers do – (1) understanding the electrical context of their design, (2) anticipating the real-world physics impact of their decisions, and (3) exploring the full solution space of stackup, placement and routing.

To achieve our vision, Quilter is reimagining automated circuit design from first principles and leveraging advancements in reinforcement learning, neural nets, and distributed computing to build a “compiler” that:

• Completes the entire job. Unlike modern autorouters, Quilter can manage all aspects of circuit board design including placement, routing, stackups, and pours to build production-ready solutions in hours.
• Optimizes designs with physics. Quilter uses physics simulations to eliminate extra iterations and delays caused by hard-to-spot issues like crosstalk and electromagnetic interference.
• Works with your existing “toolchain”. Quilter designs natively within Altium and KiCAD file formats, and returns files in the same format you gave them to us.

Where we go from here

We’re excited to partner with Benchmark on our next stage of growth and to welcome Eric Vishria to Quilter’s Board of Directors. Our Series A is also joined by Coatue and existing investors including Root Ventures and Harrison Metal Capital.

Over the last nine months, Quilter has been in closed beta with a small community of engineers who have generated more than 100K unique PCB designs. As of today, we’re extremely excited to transition Quilter to open beta and enable free access to anyone who is interested in trying it.

If you’re new to Quilter, here’s what you can expect from us moving forward:

• Growing our team. We’re currently hiring for numerous positions across AI/ML, electronics, and business domains to accelerate product awareness and adoption
• Improving the product. We’re laser-focused on expanding Quilter’s current design limitations and enabling compilation of very complex boards with strict design constraints and requirements.
• Investing in our users. We’re developing programs and partnerships that will help our users experiment with Quilter risk-free, and share their projects and designs with their teammates and other members of our community.
  

Visit Quilter.ai to learn more about Quilter, try our free beta, and join our growing community of users.

Is our beta missing a key feature for your use case? Help us shape our roadmap by:

• Sharing product feedback in our community forums and our product feedback portal 
• Sending us a message with questions or ideas via email or in our app
• Subscribing to product updates via our product newsletter and X (Twitter) / LinkedIn

Quilter's fundraise in the news:

• Reuters, Max Cherney: "Quilter raises $10 million for AI-powered circuit board design, led by Benchmark"
  • Syndicated by: US News, Market Screener, Yahoo!Finance, Business Live
• FinSMEs: "Quilter raises $10M in Series A funding"
  • Syndicated by: Communications Today
• The Register, Tobias Mann: "Quilter's AI platform nabs $10M to automate PCB layout"
• TechStartups, Nickie Louise: "AI startup Quilter secures $10M funding led by Benchmark to revolutionize circuit board design with AI"
• WSJ Pro VC: "Accolade Partners Nets More Than $1 Billion for Funds of Funds"
• Axios, Dan Primack: "Axios Pro Rata"
• Strictly VC, Connie Loizos: Newsletter
• Fortune Term Sheet, Allie Garfinkle: February 14, 2024
• CityBiz, Editorial Staff: "Quilter Raises $10M in Series A"
• Exec Sum: "Earnings" 
• LA Tech Watch, Editorial Staff: The LA TechWatch Startup Daily Funding Report: 2/13/2024