In this digital age, many innovative players are carving a niche for themselves by making inroads in a fast-evolving and ever-expanding virtual space. One of them is the start-up player Valispace, which was founded by Marco Witzmann, Louise Lindblad and Simon Vanden Bussche, in 2016. The company is based in Bremen, Germany. They decided that it was time to bring change in an industry that, although is building complex hardware to improve the future, has been still using software from the past.
Valispace is a browser-based software tool that empowers engineers to accelerate building and designing all kinds of complex hardware. From spaceships to satellites, coffee machines to carbon capture devices, Valispace eliminates the need for inefficient documentation, reduces project delays and prevents spiralling development costs.
It can be construed as a leading engineering collaboration platform. According to the International Astronautical Federation, Valispace is a browser-based software that enables engineers to collaboratively develop better satellites, rockets and other complex hardware products.
The funding of Valispace has been done in over four rounds. Their latest funding was raised on 30th March 2022, from a Seed round.
New-age Hardware Engineering
Valispace is a collaborative and intuitive browser-based software and it can be deployed both in the cloud or in-house, on company servers. “Valispace has been founded by three satellite engineers, observing that the space industry is lacking a systems engineering software to cope with the ever increasing demands of complex space missions. Using the principles & methods developed in the space industry, such as Concurrent Engineering and Model Based Design, Valispace has developed a tool that is now in use throughout all development phases of space companies such as Airbus, Gomspace, Ripple Aerospace, etc.,” stated Paris-based International Astronautical Federation.
The company aims to radically streamline the engineering process of hardware projects which can facilitate small teams to design highly complex systems fast and cheap and big teams to build things which seem like magic to us today. Valispace enables a data-driven and AI-powered approach to hardware engineering, by empowering modern hardware teams to develop highly complex systems and build innovative products.
According to European Space Agency, the journey of Valispace began when Marco Witzmann, while working as a satellite engineer at OHB in Bremen, crossed paths with Louise Lindblad, who was involved in drone and satellite projects in Portugal. In 2015, their paths converged at Start-up Weekend Space in Bremen, where Marco pitched his idea to an audience of aspiring entrepreneurs in the space industry. Their shared vision and expertise laid the foundation for their collaboration. Here it deserves a mention that before co-founding Valispace, Louise developed satellites & drones at the European Space Agency.
In 2019, Valispace became one of the first companies to be incubated by the ESA BIC Northern Germany, a milestone that proved pivotal to their success. Although Valispace initially targeted the space industry, their software has found application across a wide range of sectors. From spacecraft to automotive and robotics, Valispace has become a crucial tool for companies building physical products. More than 100 companies have benefitted from Valispace’s software.
AI Powered Assistant
In 2023, Valipace introduced ValiAssistant, an AI-Powered engineering assistant that incorporates powerful artificial intelligence technology inside Valispace and that will help generate, improve, breakdown and parametrise requirements. “Our new AI-Powered ValiAssistant capabilities will be a game-changer for engineers to boost their productivity and efficiency,” said Louise Lindblad, CPO at Valispace, who is also its Co-Founder.
The ValiAssistant is Valispace’s assisted engineering tool that leverages AI technologies to automate engineering tasks. With its integration with OpenAI, the ValiAssistant automating routine tasks and provides engineers with “an extra set of hands”, thereby enabling them to work smarter and more efficiently. The ValiAssistant can be enabled and disabled by the project admins via a tab in settings.
The ValiAssistant leverages a combination of proprietary smart calculation capabilities with the power of a Large Language Model. It uses ChatGPT for collaborative requirements and hardware engineering and has the potential to give deep insights to the developers of hardware.
While the ValiAssistant is currently focused on requirements engineering, it is expected to have other capabilities beyond this in the future. As technology continues to evolve, the ValiAssistant is expected to be at the forefront of innovation in engineering, and facilitate engineers to stay ahead of the curve and achieve optimal results.
