Circuit Mind is expanding the role of AI in hardware engineering with the launch of AVE (Agentic Verification Engine), a new application designed to identify errors in electronic circuit designs before they lead to costly manufacturing delays.
The London-based company is also preparing to expand its presence in the United States following $25 million in new financing, bringing its total funding to $33.4 million. The funding will support the establishment of a U.S. headquarters, expansion of its sales, engineering, and customer success teams, and development of its platform across more stages of the electronics design lifecycle.
Circuit Mind is building an electronic design intelligence platform that helps engineering teams generate, verify, and optimize circuit board designs. AVE joins ACE (Assistant to Circuit Engineers), the company’s existing design generation application, as it works to automate more of the process involved in developing complex electronics.
Electronic design remains a largely manual process. Engineers must interpret extensive component datasheets, evaluate electrical constraints, and review schematics against technical requirements. A missed instruction or incorrect connection can remain undetected until a physical prototype is manufactured and tested, potentially forcing teams to redesign a board and delaying the wider development schedule.
While AI has accelerated software development, applying it to hardware presents a different challenge. Engineering decisions must account for physical and electrical constraints, component specifications, and the design standards each organization follows.
AVE addresses this challenge by deploying a group of AI agents to review circuit board schematics against component datasheets, application notes, and internal engineering rules. Some agents examine component specifications, including pin configurations and operating voltages, while others trace connections and buses throughout the circuit. Before presenting results to an engineer, the system performs an additional quality-assurance pass to scrutinize its findings.
The application is designed to complement existing electronic computer-aided design (ECAD) workflows, including the review of schematics engineers have created manually. Rather than replacing established design tools, AVE adds an AI-powered verification layer intended to help teams identify potential problems earlier.
AVE builds on ACE, which generates circuit schematics, bills of materials, and supporting analysis from an architectural block diagram. ACE evaluates component choices and circuit calculations while producing design options engineers can compare based on cost, size, power requirements, and supply chain availability. Both applications combine agentic AI with Circuit Mind’s proprietary, physics-based design decision intelligence, structured component models, and each customer’s engineering standards.
The company has already demonstrated the potential to reduce development time. In a peer-reviewed case study, the space electronics team at Los Alamos National Laboratory completed a design in four hours that had previously taken two weeks. Circuit Mind also reports that its platform is being used by engineering teams at organizations including Emerson and Schneider Electric.
The expansion into the U.S. represents a significant next step for Circuit Mind as it looks to bring its technology to more North American engineering teams. The company’s $25 million financing includes an $18.5 million Series A led by Norwest, with participation from existing investors Third Prime, Differential, and Blackhorn, alongside new investor Lightscape VC. The financing also includes a previously unannounced seed round led by Third Prime. As part of the Series A, Dave Zilberman, General Partner at Norwest, will join Circuit Mind’s board of directors.
Beyond design generation and verification, Circuit Mind plans to expand its platform into additional stages of electronics development, including design analysis, reporting, testing, and firmware. The company aims to help engineering teams move from time-consuming manual processes toward faster, more reliable design workflows while continuing to use their existing ECAD environments.
AVE is available through Circuit Mind’s website, where engineering teams can request access or arrange a demonstration. The company will also showcase its technology at Electronica 2026 in Munich, November 10–13, at booth B5.565.
