“With the Celus automation platform, such a redesign process is handled in a matter of minutes.”Ĭelus has built a platform that provides engineers with component data from electronics manufacturers, while adding its own special automation sauce to the mix.

“Replacing an unavailable component with a similar component is in theory possible, but this results in a time-consuming and expensive redesign of the electronic circuit and the PCB,” Celus CEO and co-founder Tobias Pohl told TechCrunch. Companies often have to redesign their circuit boards if certain components (such as chips) become difficult to procure, a particularly common problem in the post-pandemic supply chain, which can mean engineers must return somewhere to the vicinity of square one with their design. But if you think that’s the end of the process, you might be mistaken. Only then do engineers begin drawing the actual circuit diagrams to bring all the components together, which eventually will find their way onto the final PCB. Thus, selecting the right components for the job, at the right price and availability, can be an incredibly labor-intensive manual process, involving multiple disciplines from across the company working in tandem to peruse thousands of datasheets and identify the right components. The problem is that there may be millions of different components to choose from, of different sizes and specifications from thousands of manufacturers. So, what exactly is the scale of the problem that Celus is setting out to solve? Component shortageĭesigning a PCB from scratch involves the engineer having to come up with the concept of the initial circuit diagram, based on the components that are needed to power the final product, be it transistors, resistors, capacitors, fuses, sensors, batteries, diodes and all the rest. To accelerate its mission to “automate electronics design,” Celus today announced it has raised €25 million ($25.6 million) in a Series A round of funding. And it’s this sector that Germany-based Celus wants to capitalize on, with an automated platform spanning the whole circuit board design process, from ideation to PCB. Thus, the global PCB market is big business, expected to grow from a $60 billion industry in 2020 to $75 billion by 2027. While circuit boards are mostly invisible to end users, they are foundational to the world they inhabit, powering smartphones, automobiles, microwave ovens, garage doors and the entire connected world.

Just about every electronic contraption you care to think of contains at least one printed circuit board (PCB), which serves to house and connect the various components that allow the device to function as a whole.

Adobe electrical circuit maker