CopperPilot, a startup building an AI agent that designs electronic circuit boards, has raised $390,000 in a pre-seed funding round led by Neon Fund, with participation from US-based angel investors.

The startup announced the round along with the launch of the first version of its design agent, codenamed Epsilon, which is now open to hardware engineers.

The funding will be used to strengthen product research and engineering, improve the agent's speed, intelligence and reliability, and expand the startup's engineering team in the coming months.

CopperPilot said its weekly active users have grown 25-fold since August 2026, and that more than 6,000 design tasks, which it calls artefacts, have been run on the platform so far.

Designing the electronics for a hardware product is still largely manual work. Engineers read component datasheets, choose parts, draw schematics and route the connections on a printed circuit board (PCB). A mistake found after the boards are made means a costly redesign, known in the industry as a re-spin.

CopperPilot said product development guides estimate that the electronics work alone, from schematic to ordering the first prototype boards, takes roughly 6-15 weeks and costs $7,500-30,000. The startup claims its agent can bring this down to hours.

The agent takes a plain-English description of what an engineer wants and turns it into a manufacturing-ready board design. According to the startup, it researches requirements, selects components, draws schematics, places and routes the board, and checks its own work for electrical and design-rule errors.

It works inside the software engineers already use, starting with the open-source tool KiCad, with early support for Altium and LTspice.

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