Jonny Bigert and Hugo Nordell / Encube
Europe’s manufacturing sector is under pressure, and urgently needs to regain its competitive edge. A rapidly aging workforce, talent shortages, fractured global supply chains, and an increased focus on sustainable practices are putting pressure on traditional industry models — and startups are racing to solve the problem.
Stockholm-based Encube has just raised $23m from investors including Kinnevik, Promus Ventures and Inventure to tackle those problems and make manufacturing faster, cheaper and more collaborative.
Founded in 2021 by Hugo Nordell and Johnny Bigert and launching publicly today, the deeptech startup is developing an AI-powered platform that streamlines hardware design development.
It helps teams automate reasoning about manufacturability during the design phase, rather than further down the line when issues can arise.
“Unlike existing simulation tools, there are no fully automated systems today that simulate manufacturing, specifically material removal, autonomously during the design phase,” CEO Nordell tells Pathfounders.
With Encube, fundamental engineering questions around manufacturability can be asked and addressed during the design process, rather than after the fact — a problem that drives costs up and increases waste when mistakes are made.
Nordell was previously an executive at engineering firms Sandvik and Aker Solutions, which focused on mining and energy infrastructure respectively.
It was at these companies that he saw firsthand how early design oversights can spiral into major financial losses further down the line.
At Sandvik, during a site visit to Volvo, he recalls production workers sharing a “nightmare scenario” with him — the diameter of one hole was off by 0.15mm, but that one hole was repeated 400 times on every part.
“Somehow, this had slipped through unnoticed,” he recalls. This ended up costing the company millions of dollars. “All because of one small, overlooked detail in the early design phase.”
The platform aims to prevent these problems from happening. Unlike other simulation tools, Encube brings these checks and questions about manufacturing feasibility into the design stage so that issues can be spotted earlier on.
“Hardware development is inherently a visual process,” Nordell says. “Yet, outside the modeling environment, typically a CAD tool, most of the systems supporting the process are anything but visual. They’re static, text-heavy and siloed.”
Encube creates a fully interactive, visual workplace with 3D models, simulations and supporting content and documentation functioning alongside each other. This brings members of different teams — across manufacturing, procurement and project management — into the same design loop.
Courtesy of Encube
“We’re convinced that Encube is going to accomplish for industrial manufacturing what Figma did for web design and redefine how physical products are made,” Inventure principal Adrian Arnsvik Bjurefalk says.
Encube also uses AI to interpret design changes and their implications in more accessible language so even those without deep technical knowledge can understand what changes are being made, “bridging a gap that has long held back speed and collaboration in hardware teams“.
Encube’s AI is also built to function automatically and without needing human input — there can be a human in the loop, but it isn’t required. And currently, there is a mass shortage of skilled talent in the industry, with little sign of improvement. According to a WorldSkills report, only about a third of young people in the UK would consider a career in manufacturing.
“If competence cannot be guaranteed, and the next generation doesn’t want to work in these domains, highly autonomous software will need to be part of the solution,” Nordell says. “Without it, the gap between industrial demand and the capacity to deliver in Europe will continue to grow.”
Encube plans to use the funding to scale its commercial footprint in Europe and the US, and deepen its investment in AI models for manufacturing analysis.
“Encube isn’t the only answer, but I believe what we do is critical,” Nordell adds.