13th May 2026
- DesignVerse raises $5.5m to scale its next generation AI-powered mission-critical enterprise software development products
- Technology already used by EUROCONTROL – The Pan-European Aviation Organization supporting tens of millions of passengers every year
- DesignVerse development timelines up to five times faster compared to conventional enterprise software upgrades
An enterprise software startup whose platform has helped to modernize aviation infrastructure across Europe has raised more than $5.5 million in seed funding, highlighting growing demand for tools that can safely and speedily upgrade mission-critical systems.
DesignVerse is an AI-based platform that builds and delivers complex enterprise software using an organization’s own documentation and internal rules, ensuring every system is built consistently across teams.
DesignVerse was founded by Andrei Manolache, ex-Oracle product design lead for the Redwood design system used across that company’s enterprise software products, and Robert Dragutoiu, a leading software engineer with more than two decades of experience building complex systems, including advanced self-driving automotive software and AI-driven engineering platforms.
DesignVerse technology has already been adopted by a range of mission-critical organizations, including EUROCONTROL, which is responsible for coordinating air traffic across Europe.
DesignVerse upgraded and modernized EUROCONTROL’S legacy software, overhauling a 15-year old application in just over a month as opposed to the estimated six months it would have taken using conventional methods.
Software generated using the platform now underpins aviation systems used in airports and air traffic control operations across the continent, contributing to successful journeys for tens of millions of airline passengers each year.
Using AI, DesignVerse technology allows teams to modernize operational software far faster than traditional development processes and is designed for organizations running complex legacy systems, including banks, cybersecurity platforms, and government infrastructure.
In less than five months, the company – headquartered in Bucharest, Romania, with employees across Europe – has exceeded $1.1 million in annual recurring revenue, driven entirely by enterprise customers from highly sensitive sectors.
The platform grounds its AI models in each customer’s design systems, component libraries and technical documentation, allowing software to be generated in line with the company’s existing or target architecture as well as existing or target front-end or back-end technologies.
While general-purpose AI tools allow individuals to quickly generate prototypes or simple applications, they are often unsuitable for enterprise environments where software must meet strict reliability, security, and regulatory requirements.
DesignVerse was built specifically for those organizations and mission-critical systems, addressing a longstanding challenge in digital product development: the disconnect between design intent and software execution across engineering teams.
Andrei Manolache, CEO of DesignVerse, said: “Large organizations still lose enormous amounts of time translating design work into production software. Designers create intent, but engineers must manually reinterpret and rebuild it, which leads to inconsistency and delays.
“DesignVerse removes that friction entirely, allowing teams to generate functional enterprise applications directly from their design systems, validating the behavior instantly with business stakeholders and bridging the gap between.”
The DesignVerse approach allows enterprise teams to ship digital products up to five times faster while reducing the manual work and multiple interactions typically required to translate design concepts into production software.
In a statement, EUROCONTROL points out: “Aviation is an industry where the innovation cycle is generally slower compared to others. At EUROCONTROL, we have embarked on our largest digital transformation programme to date – the Integrated Network Management (iNM) programme – aimed at reshaping this paradigm by transforming not only our technologies but also aligning our culture with new ways of working, in collaboration with our partners.
“DesignVerse, through its AI platform, has supported us in modernizing our software systems at an accelerated pace, without compromising the reliability, safety and security that remain the highest priority for our sector. We value such partnerships that contribute to our efforts to drive innovation and leverage AI at scale across the European aviation ecosystem, and ultimately improve the quality of air travel for the entire community.”
The new seed investment announced today will allow DesignVerse to expand its engineering team and accelerate growth across the enterprise sector, both in Europe and the US.
Investors in this seed round include Begin Capital, Gapminder VC, Underline Ventures, and strategic individual angel investments from companies like Adobe, LSEG, Uipath and more.
Prior to this round, DesignVerse raised $850,000 in pre-seed funding, which enabled the team to build its core platform and begin working with early enterprise design partners.
Robert Dragutoiu, Chief Technology Officer and architect of the AI model pipeline behind DesignVerse, said “Many AI coding tools available today are designed primarily for experimentation or rapid prototyping.
“Enterprises operate complex infrastructure and legacy systems, often in mission-critical environments. Software generated by AI must integrate with existing architectures and run safely in production. Our models are designed specifically for those constraints.
““Our technology builds a system-level context layer from each customer’s design systems, component libraries, and technical documentation, enabling software to be produced seamlessly in alignment with existing architecture and engineering standards, without months of custom integrations.”
Manolache points out: “Organisations running critical infrastructure cannot rely on vibe coding tools. They need software that is reliable, auditable, and built around their existing systems.
“That’s exactly the type of environment for which DesignVerse was designed.”
Notes to Editors
Photographs to accompany this story are available to download here.
For more information or interviews, please contact:
Tim Reid – [email protected] or +44 (0) 7720 414205
About DesignVerse:
DesignVerse is an AI-based platform that builds and delivers complex enterprise software using an organization’s own documentation and internal rules, ensuring every system is built consistently across teams. Our software integrates directly with the design systems, architecture patterns, and business logic enterprise which your teams rely on, eliminating drift, fragmentation, and repeated implementation effort. The DesignVerse platform bridges the gap between design and development by creating a context layer, unique for each large-scale organization, enabling teams to build and modernise complex software far faster than traditional workflows. Headquartered in Bucharest, Romania, DesignVerse works with enterprises across multiple sectors, including aviation, banking, cybersecurity, and public infrastructure. designverse.ai