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OnScale, an emerging leader in Cloud-enabled engineering simulation software, announces $10M in Series A funding led by Intel Capital and Gradient Ventures, Google’s AI-focused venture capital fund. Additional investors include Thornton Tomasetti, Stage 2 Capital, Cultivation Capital, and CampbellKlein.

OnScale, which has grown considerably since emerging from stealth in early 2018, will use the new investment to drive global expansion, respond to increasing demand, and accelerate development of its Computer-Aided Engineering (CAE) solutions for complex, real-world engineering applications.

OnScale CAE tools are based on proprietary multiphysics solvers that were developed and validated over 30 years by one of the largest engineering consulting firms in the world for DARPA, the U.S. Department of Defense (DOD), and large commercial customers. The CAE solvers were architected for highly parallel mainframe computers to handle very large engineering simulation problems and are a perfect fit for modern cloud-based, high-performance computing. OnScale was spun out of Thornton Tomasetti in 2017 and is led by Chief Executive Officer Ian Campbell, along with a strong leadership team with over 100 years of combined experience in CAE software.

The company has established a large and growing base of customers, including a number of Fortune 100 companies. OnScale gives engineers a wealth of design insights and highly accurate simulation results up to 100x faster than legacy CAE offerings. Current OnScale solutions address the simulation needs of Semiconductor and MEMS, 5G mobile, next-gen biomedical, infrastructure safety, and autonomous vehicle markets. The company is focusing on improving OnScale’s user interface, expanding the breadth of physics solver capabilities, and forming partnerships with other software companies to provide seamless engineering workflows.

“With strategic investors like Intel Capital and Google’s Gradient Ventures, OnScale is well positioned to help engineers of all disciplines solve their design challenges,” said Campbell. “Created for engineers, by engineers, our mission is to usher in the future of engineering. With this investment, we will continue to empower innovators who are creating the future of technology.”

“As technology systems become more complex, next-generation computer aided engineering software will become integral to design and deployment,” said Dave Flanagan, vice president and senior managing director at Intel Capital. “OnScale’s highly scalable CAE solution leverages the power of the cloud and advanced multiphysics to model highly complex systems, helping customers solve the toughest design challenges”. Investment Director Arun Chetty will join OnScale’s board.

“Leaps in technology require paradigm shifts in engineering, and the combination of world-class multiphysics solvers, AI, and highly scalable cloud-based HPC provide an opportunity for such a paradigm shift in how we create world-changing technologies. That is why we’re excited to welcome OnScale and its team of software experts to the Gradient portfolio.” said Zach Bratun, Partner, Gradient Ventures.

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OnScale recently released its a solver-as-a-service platform called OnScale Cloud.
The platform addresses demand for computer-aided engineering (CAE) and cloud computing resources to solve engineering challenges in areas such as, Internet of Things (IoT), Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT), sensors, biomedical and smart car industries, according to Ian Campbell, OnScale’s chief executive officer.

“The CAE/HPC space is ripe for disruption because yesterday’s systems are too expensive and cumbersome to solve tomorrow’s engineering problems,” Campbell said. “Our platform eliminates the risk associated with sequential trial-and-error physical prototyping, reduces design cycles from months to weeks or even days, and delivers unequaled computing performance that easily scales to meet ever-changing CAE workloads.”

The company initially targeting underserved market verticals, worth $4 billion, with heavy demand for advanced computer-aided engineering and high-performance computing (HPC), Campbell said. OnScale will initially focus on the following market segments:

5G – RF Filters and RF switches for 5G smartphones and base stations.
IoT and IIoT – Microphone arrays for Alexa-style IoT devices, motion and gesture sensors, biometric and fingerprint sensors and industrial sensor systems.
BioMed – Advanced therapies, targeted treatment planning and consumer ultrasound.
Driverless Car Systems – Driverless car sensing technologies like 3D ultrasound for object classification, driver and passenger monitoring.

The company’s SaaS platform combines CAE multi-physics solvers with a scalable cloud HPC platform. OnScale gives individual engineers, small engineering design teams, and multinational engineering firms cost effective computational power, agility, and scalability through a pay-as-you-go subscription model, Campbell said.

OnScale charges engineers for actual solver time, measured in core-hours. For example, a solve that requires a 16-core HPC and 30 minutes to solve would consume eight core hours. Engineers can use as many HPC instances as they like to solve massive optimization studies in parallel. This means engineers who use OnScale Cloud and the companies they work for don’t buy new CAE software licenses, pay for maintenance and support, procure expensive HPC hardware, or wait for IT to deploy and maintain CAE systems, Campbell added.

OnScale Cloud is offered in three monthly subscriptions, all with a bundle of core-hours included, for discounted, on-demand pricing:
Free: Any engineer can begin using OnScale for free and receive ten core-hours, per month without commitment. Ten core-hours is sufficient to perform many simulations of simple devices. Additional on-demand core-hours can be purchased with a credit card for $10 per core-hour.
Professional: The Professional OnScale Cloud subscription is $300 per month and includes 50 core-hours, which opens up simulation of more complicated designs and parametric design studies. Additional on-demand core-hours can be purchased for $9 per core-hour at the Professional subscription level.
Team: The Team OnScale Cloud subscription is $1,000 per month and includes 200 core-hours, enough for a small engineering team to optimize next-generation devices. Additional on-demand core-hours can be purchased for $7 per core-hour at the Team subscription level.

In addition to these subscription levels, OnScale also provides discounts for annual subscriptions and flexible subscription programs for small, medium, and large enterprises, Campbell said.

“OnScale was built for engineers, by engineers,” he said. “We’ve experienced the restrictive nature of legacy CAE tools ourselves, so we designed OnScale tools to help engineers at Fortune 100 companies and startups alike remove cost and compute constraints.”
In March, the company emerged from its stealth position and announced $3 million in strategic seed funding. Campbell founded the company along with Robbie Banks, vice president of product development, and Gerry Harvey, vice president of engineering. OnScale is a spin-off of the company Thornton Tomasetti.

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