CircuitHub, which is reshaping electronic manufacturing, has raised £21m ($28m) from Plural to unlock a new era of hardware innovation.
Founded in 2012 by CEO Andrew Seddon, CircuitHub has built the first-of-its-kind automated electronics manufacturing system that turns design files into printed, production-ready circuit boards in days.
CircuitHub builds automated, software-driven factories for on-demand electronics manufacturing. Its Grid platform enables production from one to 10,000 units with a standard three-day turnaround and automated quoting.
The investment from Plural will be used to onshore electronics manufacturing in the West and make it as fast and accessible as software.
The company employs a total of 70 people, including an R&D team in Cambridge, while it also has a growing presence in London and a US manufacturing facility in Massachusetts to be close to early customers.
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Inspired by semiconductor fabs, among the most automated systems in the world, engineers building self-driving cars, satellites and more can upload designs and order circuit boards in seconds, via CircuitHub’s online platform.
From here, the company uses automated robotics, computer vision and AI to assemble these designs at its first 5,000 sq ft factory, the Grid, before shipping them to teams around the world.
By automating large parts of the production process and monitoring quality via a small on-site team, CircuitHub’s Grid can produce a single prototype or batches of 10,000 units across dozens of different designs simultaneously.
This not only shrinks production cycles from months to days, which helps fuel innovation, but it finally makes high-mix manufacturing, where different designs are produced in small batches, economically viable in a world still built for mass production.
CEO and founder Andrew Seddon said: “Today, hardware companies face a tough choice: either spin up their own vertically integrated manufacturing from scratch, or rely on a legacy Western supply chain that’s been decaying for years.
“CircuitHub is the alternative: providing remote access to a cutting-edge factory through your browser or your AI agent. Just as software companies share cloud compute, hardware companies can now share our Grid.”
Since launching its first production facility in Massachusetts, CircuitHub has delivered 2m+ boards and placed 133m+ parts, serving 20,000 engineers across some of the world’s biggest and most innovative hardware teams.
It has become the fastest-growing electronics manufacturer in the US and, over time, CircuitHub aims to make its factories increasingly modular, allowing new capacity to be deployed wherever needed.
The company plans to expand its Grid model across the US and Europe, scaling high-speed, on-demand manufacturing that reduces reliance on distant supply chains and strengthens domestic control over critical technologies.
Sten Tamkivi, partner at Plural, said: “What CircuitHub is doing is fundamental. Andrew and the world-class CircuitHub team are changing the unit economics of the entire industry.
“As robotics, AI and advanced hardware accelerate, their combination of automation, software and data is making electronics manufacturing as fast, flexible, and accessible as writing code.
“This is also about resilience and sovereignty, ensuring that Europe and the US can design, build and iterate on critical technologies locally. It’s the kind of infrastructure shift that creates billion-dollar outcomes and will supercharge progress across physical AI, from robotics to space, energy and defence.”
Plural is an early-stage investment fund that backs the most ambitious founders on a mission to change the world through technology.
Plural launched in June 2022 with the aim to give serious founders in Europe investors with experience to match their ambition. Based in Tallinn, Estonia, and London, Plural’s mission is to have GDP-level impact on Europe, address systemic risks and reduce the opportunity gap worldwide through the companies it backs.