Funding Secured by Leo AI for Revolutionizing Mechanical Engineering, Amounting to $9.7 Million

In a groundbreaking development, Meshy AI, a startup specialising in AI-driven mechanical design, has successfully closed a $9.7 million seed round. The company's innovative platform, Leo AI, is reshaping the landscape of physical product development.

Leo AI's approach offers up to 70% faster development cycles and significant cost reductions across the entire value chain. By addressing bottlenecks directly, it is revolutionising how physical products are conceived and built.

Investors view this traction as evidence of a massive opportunity. Nearly half of all product delays in manufacturing stem from siloed knowledge and inefficient collaboration, a problem that Leo AI is addressing head-on.

The platform, already in use by more than 50,000 engineers at companies like HP, Scania, Siemens, and Mobileye, has generated over 475,000 3D concepts. Its natural language query system allows it to understand physical product design, interpreting bolts, bearings, gears, and assemblies as tokens.

Leo AI empowers engineers, giving them back time to focus on invention. They can work on high-impact projects like sustainable transportation, advanced robotics, and renewable energy solutions, rather than being bogged down by mundane, repetitive work.

The Large Mechanical Model (LMM) forms the heart of Leo's technology, built from machine parts, engineering sketches, CAD files, technical standards, and mechanical handbooks. The platform's first month of monetization saw it reach 200,000 site visitors and over $100,000 in revenue.

Next-generation systems like Leo can process text, sketches, 3D geometry, simulations, and IoT sensor data, blurring the lines between design, testing, and real-world performance feedback.

Co-founder Maor Farid reflected on the erosion of creativity in engineering due to repetitive tasks. By offloading mundane, repetitive work, engineers will spend more of their time solving meaningful problems, unlocking innovation rather than replacing human roles.

Building ethical guardrails into engineering AI will be critical to ensure safety and reliability as AI takes on greater responsibility. Leo AI, designed with enterprise security in mind, never trains on customer data to protect proprietary designs. The company has also adopted enterprise-grade cybersecurity standards to guard against data breaches.

Future engineering workflows may include "living product memories," where every design carries its full history and is instantly accessible through AI queries. Products can move from idea to prototype faster than ever, with predictive models enabling smarter maintenance and digital twins supporting real-time simulation.

Mechanical engineers can benefit greatly from Leo AI, as they often waste more than 150 workdays a year on repetitive tasks like searching for technical specifications, verifying compliance, or selecting standard components. With Leo AI, these tasks become a thing of the past, freeing up engineers to focus on what they do best: inventing and innovating.