The Flow Engineering team

I often talk about the opportunity for tech development being greater today than at any time for the past two decades. Data, automation, alternative energy, electrification, and many other areas will disrupt how we get around, power our lives, what we eat, our health and wellbeing, education and work structures. The rise of hardware engineering is at the heart of this shift, which has particular significance to me, as an ex-engineer.

But lots needs to be done to enable hardware engineering to achieve its ambition and promise. That’s why I’m really excited about today’s news from Flow Engineering. Flow is the first collaboration platform for hardware engineering teams designing complex systems and today has raised $8.5m in Seed funding from Backed VC and some of Europe’s top tech investors alongside EQT Ventures.

GitHub for hardware engineers

According to Pari Singh, Flow CEO and Founder, we’ve entered a new era of hardware engineering. Or as he calls it, a ‘new age’! After several decades where innovation flatlined, today’s ‘new age’ engineering teams have returned to the industry’s roots — building things that matter and pushing humanity forward.

But according to Pari, despite working on some of the most complex technologies out there, from EVs to rockets, ‘new age’ engineers still lack fit-for-purpose collaboration tools. Collaboration often happens via email, Microsoft Teams or in-person design review meetings… Incredibly, 35% of a hardware engineering team’s resource is spent on data administration! The current reality is that engineers working across a variety of engineering models are stuck in data management hell.

That’s where Flow comes in. Having felt the pain first hand, with team members previously working across sectors including F1 and aerospace, Pari and the team have created the GitHub for hardware engineers, a single source of truth that will help teams get products to market 30–50% faster.

Golden era of investment

We believe hardware engineering is entering a golden era of investment. Since 2010, serious money has been flowing into the industry. EVs, medical equipment and aerospace are raising billions of dollars — the amount of value to be created is vast, the problems to fix urgent.

This level of funding will continue. Perhaps most excitingly, a lot of it is going towards the development of clean technologies, to companies literally designing the future of how we work and live. That’s why what Flow is doing is so important, and we’re delighted to be a part of their milestone today.

A big congratulations to Pari and the team — we look forward to seeing what comes next!