Romanian artificial intelligence startup DesignVerse has secured $5.5 million in venture capital funding from British investment fund Begin Capital, with participation from Romanian funds GapMinder Ventures and Underline Ventures, alongside strategic angel investors from companies such as Adobe, London Stock Exchange Group, and UiPath.
The investment will allow DesignVerse to expand its engineering team and scale in both Europe and the US. This investment highlights the growing demand for tools that can safely and rapidly update the critical systems of large companies, according to StartupCafe.
Before this seed round, DesignVerse had already received $850,000 in pre-seed funding, which allowed the team to build its core platform and begin working with design partners.
DesignVerse is an AI-based platform that builds and delivers complex software for large companies and organizations, using their proprietary internal documentation and rules, ensuring that each system is built stably and congruently across all teams.
The tech startup was founded in 2024, in Bucharest, by Andrei Manolache, former Head of Product Design at Oracle for the Redwood design system, used in the company's enterprise software products, and Robert Drăguțoiu, a software engineer with over two decades of experience in building complex systems, including advanced software for autonomous vehicles and AI-powered engineering platforms.
The DesignVerse technology has already been adopted by a number of critical organizations, including EUROCONTROL, which coordinates air traffic in Europe.
DesignVerse updated and modernized EUROCONTROL's existing software, revising a 15-year-old application in just over a month, compared to the six months estimated for the process using conventional methods.
Software generated using DesignVerse now powers aviation systems used in airports and air traffic control operations across the continent, contributing daily to the travel of tens of millions of airline passengers.
Using artificial intelligence, DesignVerse technology allows teams to modernize operational software much faster than traditional development processes and is designed for organizations running complex legacy systems, including banks, cybersecurity platforms, and government infrastructure.
In less than five months, the company – headquartered in Bucharest but with employees across Europe – surpassed $1.1 million in annual recurring revenue, generated entirely by enterprise clients from highly sensitive sectors, according to the statement.
The platform bases its artificial intelligence models on each client's design systems, component libraries, and technical documentation, enabling the generation of software in accordance with the company's existing or target architecture, as well as its existing front-end or back-end technologies.
Although general-purpose AI tools allow for rapid prototyping or simple application generation, they are often unsuitable for enterprise environments, where software must meet strict reliability, security, and compliance requirements.
DesignVerse states that it was specifically created for those organizations and critical systems that have high security and regulatory standards, succeeding in bridging the gap between software design and execution within technical teams.
„Large organizations are still losing an enormous amount of time translating design work into production software. Designers create the intention, but engineers have to reinterpret and rebuild it manually, leading to inconsistency and delays. DesignVerse completely eliminates this friction, allowing teams to generate functional applications directly from their design systems, instantly validating solutions with the end client, thus reducing the gap between design, execution, and feedback,” said Andrei Manolache, CEO of DesignVerse.
The DesignVerse approach allows teams to deliver digital products up to five times faster, while reducing the manual labor and multiple interactions typically required to translate design concepts into production software.
„Aviation is an industry where the innovation cycle is generally slower compared to others. At EUROCONTROL, we have initiated the largest digital transformation program to date – the integrated Network Management (iNM) program – which aims to reshape this paradigm not only by transforming our technologies, but also by aligning our culture with new ways of working, in collaboration with our partners. DesignVerse, through its AI platform, has supported us in modernizing our software systems at an accelerated pace, without compromising reliability, safety, and security, which remain top priorities for our sector. We value such partnerships that contribute to our efforts to drive innovation and leverage artificial intelligence on a large scale across the entire European aviation ecosystem, and ultimately, to improve the quality of air travel for the entire community,” say EUROCONTROL officials.