Voxshell secures £800,000 seed funding from DSW Ventures
Voxshell Limited, a Cranfield University, UK, spinout established to support the advanced manufacturing sector, has closed an £800,000 seed funding round. The funding, led by DSW Ventures, with support from Innovate UK, will be used to accelerate ChopMesh, Voxshell’s proprietary meshing platform for engineering simulation.
While Additive Manufacturing and next-generation design tools have enabled increasingly complex product geometries, the simulation infrastructure needed to validate and refine these designs has not kept pace, states Voxshell. Converting complex 3D geometry into mesh models consumes up to 80% of total simulation time, while implicit geometry formats used in advanced manufacturing defeat legacy meshing tools entirely. This can force engineers to degrade fidelity and discard precise structural designs.
Developed by Dr Liang Yang at Cranfield University, Voxshell’s proprietary algorithm, ChopMesh, was built from the ground up to ingest implicit geometry natively without conversion, preserving the full design intent through the simulation mesh. According to the company, ChopMesh automates workflows in which legacy tools require human intervention by incorporating AI-accelerated processing, generating geometrically faithful meshes faster.
“We’re at the point where both advanced manufacturing and AI-native engineering need the same thing: faithful meshes from geometry that legacy tools simply can’t handle,” stated Yang. ”ChopMesh is built natively for exactly that geometry, which uniquely positions us to serve both today’s aerospace and industrial engineers and the fast growing class of Phsyics-AI companies that depend on high-quality mesh data. This funding is a strong endorsement of that mission and the team behind it.”
Voxshell is also developing a higher-performance version of ChopMesh, capable of automating the batch processing of large-scale mesh files beyond the capabilities of many existing tools, according to Voxshell. This version is reportedly due to be released later this year.
As Voxshell continues to develop its platform, the capital will be used to scale its engineering team and add automated workflow orchestration to the platform, while supporting the team in building on the initial commercial traction it generated, and extending its go-to-market partnerships.
Dr Mira Androniciuc, Investment Associate at DSW Ventures, added, “In a short space of time, Voxshell has already gained significant traction among customers and OEMs. We’re proud to be backing this innovative business as it continues to advance its proprietary ChopMesh platform. The team’s breakthrough positions the platform uniquely to fuel the data-hunger Physics-AI industry and drive the next generation of engineering simulation software.”
Alongside the investment, Clive Scrivener joins Voxshell as Non-Executive Chair. As the former CEO of Prodrive, Scrivener is currently Chair at Oxa, the Oxford autonomous vehicle spinout. He has also held multiple other Chair and non-executive roles in scaling technology businesses, including CloudNC.
