Encube, a Stockholm-based DeepTech startup, is rising from stealth with €19 million in funding to remodel how {hardware} merchandise are designed and manufactured, serving to groups keep away from pricey design complexity, velocity up improvement and decrease manufacturing prices.
The spherical was backed by Kinnevik, Promus Ventures, and Inventure.
“{Hardware} improvement is a balancing act between how a product appears, features and what it prices to supply. In Europe, we excel on the first two, however our manufacturing know-how is disappearing. At Sandvik and Aker, I noticed firsthand how shortly manufacturing prices ballooned and aggressive edge eroded, when early design choices weren’t made with manufacturing in thoughts. We constructed Encube to change that,” says Hugo Nordell, CEO and Co-founder of Encube.
Encube’s launch funding arrives amid a surge of European funding in AI utilized to industrial and manufacturing processes.
In 2025, Resourcly (Germany) raised €2.7 million for an AI-driven stock platform, whereas 36ZERO Imaginative and prescient (Germany) secured €3.6 million to scale its data-efficient inspection software program. Bigger progress rounds, corresponding to PhysicsX (UK) with €117 million and Pelico (France) with €34.7 million, present rising investor urge for food for AI-native engineering infrastructure. At an earlier stage, Bonx (France) and CloEE (Finland) attracted €7.3 million and €520k respectively for factory-focused software program.
Inside this funding panorama, Encube’s elevate sits within the higher mid-range and displays rising confidence in AI platforms that combine design and manufacturing intelligence somewhat than specializing in slim manufacturing duties. Headquartered in Sweden, Encube additionally stands out throughout the Nordic deep-tech ecosystem, the place few 2025 industrial AI startups have raised at comparable scale.
“Encube is one of the promising improvements I’ve seen in {hardware} engineering within the final 30 years. The software program’s ease of use and the velocity of its simulations symbolize a significant leap ahead,” says Ralf Usinger, International Head of Engineering Purposes at Past Gravity.
Based in 2021 by former Sandvik and Aker govt Hugo Nordell, along with Skype and Klarna veteran Johnny Bigert,, Encube is a European DeepTech startup creating AI-powered instruments and workflows for {hardware} improvement. The corporate additionally conducts analysis in AI for {hardware} design, aiming to handle advanced challenges within the improvement course of.
Validated by corporations corresponding to Volvo Group, Past Gravity and Scania, Encube develops an AI-powered platform that makes it quicker and simpler for {hardware} groups to know which product design decisions drive manufacturing complexity and methods to keep away from them.
This allegedly ends in shorter time to market, decrease price of manufacturing and permits groups to discover exponentially extra design instructions than in any other case attainable.
“Securing competence in our engineering and industrialisation features may be very difficult. A lot of our key individuals are approaching retirement. Encube actually helps us navigate the chance this creates for us,” says Jonas Hellman Peterson, Head of Gross sales Engineering at Birn Group.
Including to trade pressures, tightening European sustainability laws are requiring producers to rethink how merchandise are designed and constructed. Smarter product improvement and digital workflows on the design stage have gotten important to enhance each financial efficiency and environmental impression.
In {hardware} improvement, as much as 80% of a product’s price is decided as soon as the design is locked. Nonetheless, the corporate says many design choices have an effect on manufacturing prices and the carbon footprint in methods that aren’t instantly apparent till they enter the manufacturing section.
Consequently, companies are left with a troublesome selection: both settle for decreased profitability or redo the designs and delay market launch.
“We rely completely on third events to fabricate our robots. Encube makes it a lot simpler for us to uncover and mitigate product danger early in improvement along with our suppliers and prospects,” says Mattias Vanberg, Director of Improvement at Cognibotics.
Encube says they resolve this problem in two methods.
- First, with a collaborative software program platform that helps complete organisations align and make quicker, higher product choices, all immediately within the browser on any system.
- Second, with AI-powered capabilities embedded contained in the platform. These capabilities allow groups to eradicate frequent bottlenecks in {hardware} improvement initiatives.
One instance of such a bottleneck is the necessity to manually determine design adjustments over time in order that the group can decide if a change causes issues later. One other is to analyse how advanced a design can be to fabricate, together with what design decisions drive this complexity.
“AI is basically reworking how merchandise are designed, enabling engineering groups to simulate, iterate and collaborate at unprecedented velocity. Encube is pioneering this shift by embedding manufacturing intelligence immediately into the engineering workflow, shaping the way forward for product improvement. We’re excited to associate with Hugo and the group on this journey,” says Tatiana Shalalvand, Funding Director at Kinnevik.
With a long-term ambition to assist rebuild, safe and strengthen European industrial competitiveness, Encube will use its new financing to increase its industrial footprint throughout Europe, deepen present partnerships and speed up investments in hardware-focused AI, positioning the corporate to trip the present AI wave extra aggressively.
“We’re extremely proud to have been the primary traders in Encube and our rising conviction on this stellar group has solely been outpaced by the velocity of their progress. We’re satisfied that Encube goes to perform for industrial manufacturing what Figma did for net design and redefine how bodily merchandise are made,” says Adrian Arnsvik Bjurefalk, Principal at Inventure.
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