Flux raises $30M Series B led by APC to build AI hardware engineer for PCB design

profitable advertising made easy with Axon.ai. Get access to over 1 billion daily active users and grow your business today. Uh we have been keeping our next guest waiting. We have Matias Wagner from Flux.ai. He's the founder and CEO and he has some exciting news for us.

What's happening?

Welcome to the show. How are you doing? Please introduce yourself to the company.

Hi guys. Thanks for having me. My name is Matias. I'm the founder CEO of Flux and you know we're building the first AI hardware engineer.

Amazing. And give us the news today. You raised some money. What happened?

Yeah, we closed the series B. We raised a total of uh $30 million in new capital

across congratulations.

Led by ABC. So, you know, super stoked and uh you know, stepping on the gas here now.

Yeah. Talk about the key problem, the key uh the key product, where you are in development, rolling out uh getting product in the hands of customers.

Yeah, good question. So I mean you know you've all heard it before hardware is hard.

Yeah.

And uh we felt like this is like learned uh helplessness you know

and we're taking the heart out of hardware right? So if you think here what

it's just wear now.

It's just where

exact right

but you know we we're starting with electronics here um cuz you know it's like a very standardized form factor and it's really at the heart of anything that's worthwhile building these days if you think about you know computers, robots, uh what have you. Um, and the insight here really was like, right, that if you think about how easy it's become over the last two, three decades to make software, especially now with the with the AI boom, right?

Hardware hasn't gotten any easier to make.

Yeah.

Right. Even though the supply chain is incredibly available now, I mean, I can like from anywhere in the world for like $20 can get a PCB manufactured in China and sent back in seven days fully assembled. Right.

And that that you couldn't do 20 years ago. you had to be Loheed Martin or Apple or like a big tech company to afford that. But now everybody can do that. But the the design tools just don't exist and they're not accessible. And that's what we're solving for.

So talk about the inputs and the outputs. Obviously at the end I get some sort of PCB spec is that just a CAD file or a PDF? Uh and then what am I actually putting in? Is it just software that then I want to be translated into hardware? Like at what level of abstraction are we operating here?

Yeah, great question. So look the vision is that you can go like if you think about catch you can go from like an a prompt to a poem y

right or like clock code you can go from a prompt to a bug fix or a feature with flux right ultimately we want to enable you to go from a prompt to an iPhone class device right now that's a long road right uh so what we are today is like you can make like what's like mid small to make complexity you can probably single shot today and everything else is going to be more iterative you know again like cloud code devon cursor all these tools very very comparable Sure, it makes sense. Uh, who's the best customer for you right now? Where do you see that going? Are you going after startups that are iterating really quickly? This is speeding them up or are you going to large organizations that already turnurning out tons and tons of PCB designs?

Yeah. So, it's a good mix, but most customers are SMBs. What we're seeing is that there's like, you know, only about 25% of our customers have previously made a PCB themselves.

Sure.

The others are technical. There are mechanical engineers, firmware engineers, industrial designers, right? But they didn't have the time, patience or resources before to make custom boards and they would obviously previously buy OEM boards, right? If you think about like a favorite example I have, we have this customer, they make vending machines like snack, beverage vending machines and they would previously buy four or five off-the-shelf boards and integrate them into a single machines. So think about the board that powers the display, the payment, the motor in here and so on. Um, and now they can make like a custom like a single custom board with flux, right? that's much cheaper to integrate into the machines on the assembly line, the machine breaks down in the field, right? You know, where they're standing there like somewhere in the rain, you know, there's one board to replace and then, right, the board costs in pennies on the dollars compared to before, right? Because what you're paying now is material cost, you know, to a manufacturer in China, right? I can do that for you. And so that's kind of like here the the main driver, I think.

What's your favorite printed circuit board or favorite product that has a PCB in it?

Ooh, the space shuttle.

The space shuttle. That's a good answer.

No, I looked this up the other day. So, the space shuttle uh I think was one of the first boards that had like eight layers or so, right, at the time and it was handdrawn. They didn't have software for it at the time, right? Which is like crazy if you think about that.

Um, so yeah, this is like a fun anecdote.

That's a great one. Jord, anything else?

Wild, wild, wild. Uh how have you seen anything exciting on the US side on the supply chain side

on actual PCB

manufacturing? Is there I feel like we had somebody on the show last year that was trying to make uh PCB

like we have send cut send now for uh for like machined parts and and things that you need to cut. Is there is there a great company in America that's starting to think about PCB?

Yeah, like if we have our own Shenzen, I imagine it would have a variety of

Yeah. manufacturers like this to really because you want to get to the point where you can kind of sit next to the manufacturer and really speed up that iteration cycle.

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, look, a lot of people like us want that, right? We looked into the details of like opening our own fap here in Fremont or so, but you realize quickly, right, making PCB boards is like the board itself is a chemical process. Good luck getting the permits, right? It's possible, but it's hard, right? And so, these are kind of like the bumps you run into. But I think there is exciting opportunities here, right?

Um especially because like if you're designing these boards with AI, right? Then you can also optimize for the capabilities uh and the inventory you have at the factory,

right? Because the way to make this cheap to make is to like design it so it can be assembled automatically by machines, right? But for that to work, essentially these pick and place machines, they have to have all the semiconductors you need uh on their on their rails, right? Um

and and that's difficult to do for humans to optimize for, right? because it's like a quick changing thing. But I think as we're automating all this, right, we can have the models designed towards what the what the factory can spit out in an hour, you know, for for almost zero cost.

That's amazing. Congratulations. Thank you so much for taking the time to come talk to us

with with this pace. I'm sure you'll be back on this year.

Yeah, this is amazing.

All the progress.

I hope so.

Have a great rest of your day. We'll talk to you soon.

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We are getting him set up.

Sorry about that.

We can head

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