Leo AI Raises $9.7M to Power a New Era of Mechanical Engineering

Leo AI, the startup pioneering AI-driven mechanical design, has successfully closed an oversubscribed $9.7 million seed round. The round was led by Flint Capital, with support from an a16z scout, TechAviv, Two Lanterns VC, Bertrand Sicot (former CEO of SolidWorks), and Prof. Yossi Matias, VP at Google. The new funding will allow Leo AI to expand its team, move into new global markets, and continue to refine its groundbreaking platform—positioning itself as one of the most important emerging players at the intersection of engineering and artificial intelligence.

A New Category of AI: The Large Mechanical Model (LMM)

At the heart of Leo’s technology lies its Large Mechanical Model (LMM). Unlike traditional AI systems, which are trained primarily on language data, Leo’s foundation is built from millions of machine parts, engineering sketches, CAD files, technical standards, and mechanical handbooks. Where a system like GPT understands words as tokens and assembles them into sentences, Leo understands bolts, bearings, gears, and assemblies as its tokens, assembling them into manufacturable designs.

This approach makes Leo the first AI designed specifically for physical product design. Engineers can type a simple prompt like “show me a bolt that fits this hole,” and Leo responds by analyzing the geometry, standards, and constraints involved, instantly producing the correct part. The model goes far beyond keyword matching—it understands mechanical intent.

Why Mechanical Engineers Need It

Mechanical engineers are responsible for designing the world’s physical systems: cars, planes, energy turbines, industrial robots, satellites, consumer appliances, and much more. Their work spans the full cycle of design, testing, compliance, and production. Yet despite their central role in innovation, many still rely on decades-old workflows that consume vast amounts of time.

Studies show that engineers can waste more than 150 workdays a year on repetitive tasks like searching for technical specifications, verifying compliance, or selecting standard components. This leaves less than half their time for actual design and innovation. Beyond slowing progress, these inefficiencies can drive up product development costs by as much as 35%.

Leo addresses this bottleneck directly. By integrating with the tools engineers already use, Leo enables real-time answers drawn from an organization’s own data and global standards. Instead of spending hours cross-checking, an engineer can query Leo in natural language and receive an instant, accurate solution. That translates into up to 70% faster development cycles and cost reductions across the entire value chain.

Traction With Industry Leaders

The early traction has been impressive. Already, more than 50,000 engineers at companies like HP, Scania, Siemens, and Mobileye have used Leo to generate over 475,000 3D concepts. The platform reached 200,000 site visitors and over $100,000 in revenue in its first month of monetization—remarkable for a company founded in 2023 and still early in its journey.

Investors see this traction as evidence of a massive opportunity. As one backer noted, nearly half of all product delays in manufacturing stem from siloed knowledge and inefficient collaboration. By addressing those bottlenecks directly, Leo is not just improving design workflows—it is reshaping how physical products are conceived and built.

Beyond Efficiency: Restoring Creativity

For many engineers, the day-to-day grind of repetitive checks and database queries has eroded the creative spark that drew them to the profession in the first place. Co-founder Maor Farid reflected on this when describing his own career path:

“When I started out as a mechanical engineer, I thought I’d be designing life-saving robots and next-gen vehicles. Instead, I spent weeks just searching for parts. That’s the harsh reality for most engineers today. Leo changes that dynamic—it gives them back the time to focus on invention.”

By reclaiming hours each week, engineers can redirect their energy toward the innovative, high-impact work that truly matters—whether that’s sustainable transportation, advanced robotics, or renewable energy solutions.

Engineering design often involves sensitive intellectual property, from trade secrets to safety-critical schematics. Unlike generic AI models, Leo is designed with enterprise security in mind. It never trains on customer data, ensuring that proprietary designs remain private. The company has adopted enterprise-grade cybersecurity standards to protect against data breaches—an increasingly costly problem for businesses worldwide.

The Broader Implications: A Future of AI-Driven Engineering

Leo AI’s impact cannot be measured solely by efficiency metrics or adoption figures. Its rise signals a broader transformation in how engineering will evolve over the next decade:

• AI as a Design Partner: Rather than functioning as a passive tool, AI is becoming a collaborator—capable of interpreting sketches, CAD files, and constraints to provide suggestions and generate solutions alongside engineers.

• Connected Engineering Ecosystems: Future workflows may include “living product memories,” where every design carries its full history—materials, revisions, compliance checks, supplier data—instantly accessible through AI queries.

• Multimodal Intelligence: With the ability to process text, sketches, 3D geometry, simulations, and even IoT sensor data, next-generation systems like Leo will blur the lines between design, testing, and real-world performance feedback.

• Acceleration Across Industries: From automotive to aerospace, products can move from idea to prototype faster than ever, with predictive models enabling smarter maintenance and digital twins supporting real-time simulation.

• Human Creativity Amplified: By offloading mundane, repetitive work, engineers will spend more of their time solving meaningful problems—unlocking innovation rather than replacing human roles.

• Ethical and Transparent Systems: As AI takes on greater responsibility, questions of trust, accountability, and transparency will become paramount. Building ethical guardrails into engineering AI will be critical to ensure safety and reliability.

Why This Matters

The story of Leo AI is not simply about one company’s funding success. It represents a shift in how we think about the future of design and engineering. As artificial intelligence becomes more specialized, systems like Leo will extend human capabilities rather than replace them.

This is a future where engineers and AI work side by side, combining human ingenuity with machine precision to build the next generation of products—faster, safer, and with greater creativity. For an industry long constrained by outdated tools, Leo’s vision of an AI-powered engineering partner could be the catalyst for a new industrial revolution.