circuit-board-design
(3)
Diode Computers, Inc.
Diode Computers is a New York-based startup building an AI-powered, code-first platform for designing and manufacturing custom printed circuit boards. Its open-source toolchain - a Rust-based PCB compiler that treats schematics as Python-readable code - lets AI agents and engineers generate, validate, and manufacture boards in days rather than months, with human-in-the-loop verification. Founded in 2024 and backed by a $11.4M Series A led by Andreessen Horowitz, Diode serves hardware teams in aerospace, robotics, and defense.
Quilter
Quilter is a Los Angeles-based company building the first fully autonomous, physics-driven AI for printed circuit board (PCB) layout. Founded in 2019 by former SpaceX avionics engineer Sergiy Nesterenko, Quilter trains reinforcement-learning agents on the laws of physics - not human design patterns - to place components, route traces, and physics-validate complete board designs in hours instead of weeks. The company positions itself as the 'compiler for hardware,' aiming to make manual PCB layout as obsolete as hand-compiling code.
Duncan Haldane
Duncan Haldane is the co-founder and CEO of JITX, a Berkeley-born startup that lets electrical engineers design circuit boards by writing code instead of dragging lines on a screen. Before software, he built robots: at UC Berkeley he created two Guinness World Record machines - the X2-VelociRoACH, the fastest robot relative to its size, and Salto, the most vertically agile jumping robot ever built. He holds a PhD in mechanical engineering from Berkeley and started JITX in 2017 because he wanted a faster way to design the hardware inside his robots.