PhysicsX raises $32M to give engineers AI superpowers to accelerate design of advanced technologies
- PhysicsX is building AIs to power breakthrough engineering in sectors including aerospace, automotive, renewables, and materials production
- Founded by a team with deep backgrounds in simulation engineering and enterprise AI that’s worked in the world’s most advanced engineering companies, including in Formula One
- The technology is hyper-accelerating physics simulation and engineering optimization, leading to improved new products and materials
London, 28th November 2023: PhysicsX, a startup bringing the power of generative AI to enable breakthrough engineering in advanced industries including automotive, aerospace, renewables and materials production, raised $32M in a Series A round led by General Catalyst. Standard Investments, NGP Energy, Radius Capital, and KKR co-founder and co-executive chairman, Henry Kravis, also participated in the round.
Emerging from stealth to meet the needs of engineers across sectors, PhysicsX is building AIs that dramatically accelerate accurate physics simulation, enable generative engineering solutions, vastly accelerate some of the most time-consuming activities in the engineering process, and make complex engineering across industries more accessible. This is a new class of AI-first digital engineering solutions that offers a new frontier of optimization opportunities for engineering, manufacturing, and operations for complex machines across advanced and heavy industries.
Unlocking performance for the whole engineering stack
Accelerating the energy transition hinges on overcoming fundamental engineering bottlenecks to the deployment of more efficient technologies and machines at scale. From time-consuming physics simulation to the painstaking reconciliation of virtual simulation and real-world data collection to the many limitations of optimizing over a large design space – these are among many bottlenecks holding back industries from developing and manufacturing advanced designs and materials that PhysicsX is working to address with its AI engineering solutions and stack. Founded by Robin Tuluie and Jacomo Corbo, PhysicsX is a team of over 50 simulation engineers, machine learning and software engineers, and data scientists with backgrounds spanning numerical physics, enterprise AI, and advanced engineering, including in Formula One. For the last three years, the team has worked with some of the largest and most sophisticated engineering and manufacturing organizations in the world on their most critical engineering challenges.
The funding will accelerate PhysicsX’s growth across customer delivery, product, and fundamental research, so that the company can be an effective engineering partner to its customers, build out its product engineering arm, and expand its research arm to advance its AI models and methods.
As part of the round, entrepreneur Jim Baum, General Catalyst XIR (Executive in Residence), has joined the company’s Board, bringing over 25 years of experience growing and managing cutting-edge technology businesses including at Netezza, Endeca, and PTC. Jeremy Palmer, former Chairman and CEO of QuantumBlack and a former Senior Partner at McKinsey, will also join as Chairman.
Robin Tuluie, founder and co-CEO of PhysicsX, said: “Engineering design processes were transformed by numerical simulation and the availability of high-performance compute infrastructure. The move from numerical simulation to deep learning represents a similar leap and will unlock new levels of product performance and ways of practicing engineering itself. PhysicsX exists to help pioneer and enable that transformation, giving engineers and manufacturers superpowers in bringing new technologies to the real world.”
Jacomo Corbo, co-founder and co-CEO PhysicsX, said: “Our customers are designing the most important technologies of our time, including wind turbines, aircraft engines, electric vehicles, semiconductors, metals, and biofuels . They are exceeding the limits of today’s Computer Aided Engineering tooling- which is the basis for our own collaboration with them and is the starting point for the problems we set our technology against. We’re delighted that this financing will enable us to partner more deeply with our customers to enable breakthrough engineering.”
Larry Bohn, Managing Director, General Catalyst, said: “PhysicsX expands engineering boundaries in crucial sectors, led by a team deeply skilled in simulation engineering and machine learning. With credibility, customer relationships, and technical expertise, we believe PhysicsX is poised to transform engineering in complex industries. This aligns with our vision for industrial transformation and positions PhysicsX with the opportunity to create a category-defining company in advanced industries.”
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About PhysicsX: PhysicsX is a deep tech company of scientists and engineers, developing AIs to enable breakthrough engineering. Born out of numerical physics and Formula One, the startup is working at the edge of advanced Computer Aided Engineering, physics simulation and machine learning to solve its customers’ most difficult engineering challenges across design, manufacturing, and operational control. PhysicsX operates in sectors including Space and Aerospace, Additive Manufacturing, Electric Vehicles, Renewables, and Materials Production.
About General Catalyst: General Catalyst invests in powerful, positive change that endures — for our entrepreneurs, our investors, our people, and society. We support founders with a long-term view who challenge the status quo, partnering with them from seed to growth stage and beyond to build companies that withstand the test of time. With offices in San Francisco, Palo Alto, New York City, London, and Boston, the firm has helped support the growth of businesses such as: Airbnb, Deliveroo, Guild, Gusto, Hubspot, Illumio, Lemonade, Livongo, Oscar, Samsara, Snap, Stripe, and Warby Parker. For more: www.generalcatalyst.com.