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Seca, a startup specializing in hardware design automation, announced on the 19th that it has secured seed investment from LG Electronics and deep-tech accelerator Bluepoint Partners. The investment amount and corporate valuation remain undisclosed.
Seca is a startup launched as an independent legal entity through 'Studio 341,' an internal venture program jointly operated by LG Electronics and Bluepoint. It is developing an 'AI-based Electronic Design Automation' platform that connects various design data scattered across manufacturing sites and automates the hardware design process using AI (artificial intelligence).
In the electronics, automotive, and semiconductor industries, products are becoming increasingly complex, with multiple organizations participating in development simultaneously, leading to a growing workload due to design changes. Every time requirements or drawings are modified, it is necessary to manually verify whether the changes have been properly reflected in other design documents such as related circuit diagrams and bills of materials (BOM).
Seca automates these tasks by connecting fragmented design data—including requirements, datasheets, circuit diagrams, BOMs, drawings, register transfer level (RTL), and netlists—into a single unified system. Its goal is to support everything from consistency verification of design changes to component recommendations and circuit design and validation.
To achieve this, Seca organizes the relationships between design elements into an ontology structure to automatically track the scope affected by changes. Rule engines are applied in areas requiring precise judgment based on standards such as voltage, temperature, and interfaces, while its own large language model (LLM) and vision-language model (VLM) are utilized to interpret technical documents and drawings.
Currently, Seca is conducting pilot projects with domestic and international manufacturing companies, including LG Electronics' home appliance and vehicle electronics (VS) business division, DB Global Chip, and Airbus. Seca plans to expand its customer base based on follow-up adoption demand after the validation phase.
In the future, it intends to build a 'Hardware-Specialized Foundation Model (HW Foundation Model)' that learns circuit connection relationships, physical constraints, and past design history to further advance its AI for EDA platform.
Kim Jun-hyeong, CEO of Seca who leads the company, previously handled design software, data, and AI-related work at LG Electronics' automotive electronics business division.
Choo Woo-jin, Senior Reviewer at Bluepoint, stated, "Seca is a team equipped with the technical expertise to solve chronic problems in the manufacturing engineering process and the rapid execution capability." He added, "Given its strong reception on corporate sites, we expect Seca to grow into a company that will lead the next-generation engineering software market."
Meanwhile, Studio 341 is a program launched by LG Electronics in 2023 to identify internal ventures that inherit the entrepreneurial spirit of Samsung's predecessor, Gold Star. Bluepoint supports the entire process alongside LG Electronics, from selecting internal ventures to nurturing them and facilitating their spin-off as independent legal entities.
[MoneyToday startup media platform Unicorn Factory]
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