January 11, 2022
The solution scans the technical specifications of the circuit components and detects errors in the drawing. The company conducted pilots with Intel and Israeli security companies. CEO of Techtime: “The engineer does not currently have a comprehensive and automated testing tool in the design of the electrical circuit”
Startup CADY, which has developed artificial intelligence-based technology for testing electrical circuits, has completed a $ 3 million round of funding. The round was led by Trahmips Technologies and Udi Peles, who founded and managed Friendly Robotics, which developed automatic lawn mowers and sold to American MDT in 2017 for $ 45 million, and will now serve as chairman of CADY. Trahmips Technologies is managed by Pavel Radzyvilovsky and Woody Zlotnik, former founders Visionmap, Bride of the Israel Security Award acquired by Rafael in 2013. Also participating in the round were TAU Ventures, the investment fund of Tel Aviv University that invested in the company in the early stages, as well as Ventures Aristagora VC, Today Ventures, Atooro, Tal, Amit Gilon, Rafi Gidron and other private investors.
CADY was founded in 2020 by Gilad Shapira, the company’s CEO, Tal Ben Porat, Chief Technology Officer, and Or Shabtai, the research director, whom they met during their joint service in the Intelligence Corps. The company has invested $ 4 million since its inception, including the current round.
CADY operates in the emerging market of electrical circuit design. The more complex the chips, the more complex it is to design the electrical circuits that connect the components onto the printed circuit board (PCB). Unlike the world of chip design, where there are powerful tools for chip verification and testing, in the design of the electrical circuit the engineer is required to perform most of the testing manually or with the help of a colleague. As a result, most electrical errors are detected only in the physical product of the circuit, i.e. in the prototype stage. When a prototype fault is detected the engineer returns to the drawing, locates the fault and submits the revised design for remanufacturing of a prototype. This is a cumbersome, lengthy process and also involves high costs, and usually in development processes it is often necessary to produce a number of prototypes (so-called re-spin) before mass production can begin.
In a conversation with Techtime, the company’s CEO, Gilad Shapira, explained that the company’s solution is intended to address the shortage of testing tools in the field of electrical circuit design. “Currently, the engineer does not have any automatic and comprehensive tools that help him perform the test at the design stage and he has to do it manually. It is time consuming and usually the engineer will not locate all the errors on the drawing. Studies have shown that in every design, at least a number of errors are discovered, and therefore the prototype must always be returned to some improvements. ”
The CADY solution makes it possible to perform this test at the drawing stage. The company has developed software for automatic testing of drawings of electrical circuits, based on artificial intelligence technology. The software scans with the help of machine learning algorithms the technical specifications of all chips and other components embedded in the drawing, understands the requirements and characteristics of each component and component, such as voltage and temperature requirements and connection types, and checks them against the connections in the drawing itself. Before submitting the drawing for prototype production. The platform provides the engineer with feedback on the drawing within minutes.
Shapira: “There are solutions on the market that try to perform the test based on the principles of electrical theory, but these are unsatisfactory solutions that do not take into account the different requirements of each manufacturer and each component. Our advantage does not stem from a unique expertise in electricity, but from the ability to convert technical specifications, which are written in natural language and usually appear in PDF format, into a formal language that allows for automatic testing of the circuit against the specification. Our goal is for our solution to reduce the number of re-spins to a minimum, and even to zero. ”
Pilots with Intel and security companies
According to the company, error detection already in the initial stage improves and accelerates the design process, significantly saves resources, shortens time to market and increases the quality and reliability of the final product. Shapira: “Along with the chip market, the electrical circuit market has also experienced a dramatic increase in recent decades in the complexity of design and testing. Every circuit designed for vehicles, computers, telephones and other electronic devices becomes more compressed and complex, embedded in more and more components, and therefore also more difficult to test. Now, more than ever, there is a need for an automated artificial intelligence-based testing tool to test drawings of electrical circuits. ”
CADY has conducted a series of successful pilots with business units in international technology companies and Israeli defense companies in which it has successfully identified errors in the early stages. In addition, the company was accepted into the fifth round of Intel Ignite and has already performed successful pilots with 3 business units at Intel. The investment money will be used to recruit additional employees and move from the pilot phase to sales.
Posted in categories: Capital Raising, Start-ups, News, Test Equipment
Posted in tags: CADY, Intel, electrical circuit
