Circuit Mind lands $25M and puts AI agents to work checking circuit board schematics

Circuit Mind has raised $25 million to push its AI software deeper into electronics design, and it’s not stopping at drawing boards. The British startup also launched a new verification tool that uses AI agents to hunt for errors in circuit schematics, turning what is usually a slow manual review into software work.

The company’s pitch is simple enough: designing hardware is still painfully manual. Engineers can spend more than a year on a new piece of hardware, and some of that time goes into reading datasheets that run to thousands of pages. By the time a mistake shows up, the prototype is often already built.

Circuit Mind says generic large language models aren’t enough for this job. Its platform pairs AI agents with a patented, physics-based engine that checks design decisions against electrical limits, using the company’s own machine-readable component models and each customer’s engineering rules. The original product takes a hardware block diagram and turns it into a schematic, a bill of materials and supporting analysis in minutes, with multiple design options tuned for things like cost or power. The output can move straight into the EDA software engineers already use.

The new Agentic Verification Engine, or AVE, is aimed at design review. It sends a swarm of AI agents through component datasheets and customer checklists, tracing every connection and bus for mismatches with pin tables or operating voltages. Only after the system has critiqued its own findings does anything reach an engineer.

Circuit Mind points to customers including Los Alamos National Laboratory, Schneider Electric and several Fortune 5 companies. The lab’s engineers finished a medium-difficulty board in just over four hours using the software, versus an estimated 60 to 80 hours by hand. Schneider Electric has seen early work on electronic architecture cut by more than 90%, according to Daniel Gheno, its chief technology officer for energy management. Emerson Electric’s Charlie Eastberg said the tools have sped up the move from system architecture to schematic and improved design validation and review coverage.

The money comes in two parts: an $18.5 million Series A led by Norwest Venture Partners, plus a previously unannounced seed round led by Third Prime. Existing investors Third Prime, Differential Ventures and Blackhorn Ventures joined the new round, along with Lightscape Partners. Including this funding, backers have now put $33.4 million into the business. Circuit Mind plans to use the cash to expand into testing and firmware, grow sales and support, and open a U.S. headquarters.