As the EV market stagnates under increasing pressure from Chinese competitors, major U.S. and European automakers are racing to reduce the cost of producing EVs to achieve price and profit margin parity with internal combustion engine vehicles. But to do that, they must find ways to make the design process faster and more efficient.
Now, a spinout company from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne (EPFL) has raised $27 million in a Series B funding round to apply AI to solve that very problem.
Simply put, Neural Concept enables designers to model how a component will behave before they manufacture it. It's not enough to just have a blueprint of a component — you need to know how it will work as part of an engine, for example — and that's where this platform comes in. Applications of this could be useful across a wide range of industries, including automotive, microelectronics, aerospace, and energy.
The company claims that by using deep learning in a 3D environment, combining data analytics and machine learning, it can reduce development time by up to 75% and make product simulations up to 10 times faster.
Neural Concept team. Image credit: Neural Concept
Pierre Baquet, co-founder and CEO of Neural Concepts, says the platform will rapidly accelerate a process that is currently done manually: “For example, say you have a battery design and you want to improve its performance to increase its thermal efficiency. Our software knows the properties of the materials and therefore suggests improvements to increase efficiency,” Baquet explains.
“Before our software, it was typical for a CAD designer to draw a 3D design and then send it to someone else to run very complex numerical simulations. These simulations could take a very long time or require physical testing. Now our platform can guide the designer directly.”
Baquet believes his platform could cut EV development time from four years to 18 months.
The startup's products are currently used by Airbus, Bosch, General Electric, Mubea, Subaru, and four Formula 1 racing teams, and the company is working with NVIDIA to optimize the graphics card manufacturer's GPUs and CUDA software.
Neural Concept is competing with much larger “component simulation” giants such as ANSYS, which are trying to move into this “deep learning” field with their own platform.
The Series B was led by Forestay Capital, with participation from existing investors Alven, Constantia New Business, HTGF and Aster Group. The round follows a $9 million Series A in March 2022 and a $2 million seed round in 2020. The new funding will be used for hiring and expansion into Europe, Asia Pacific and the US.
“Neural Concepts is pioneering 3D deep learning, the cutting edge of AI, and has shown incredible traction and results with clients across industries around the world,” Deborah Pittet, senior principal at Forestay Capital, said in a statement.