Latvia-based Trace.Space, a SaaS startup building AI-powered tools for engineering product development, announced on Tuesday that it has secured $1.5M (approximately €1.3M) in a Pre-Seed round of funding led by Fiedler Capital.
Nebular, Tiny VC, Foreword VC, Microsoft’s former GM Charlie Songhurst, and Change Ventures also participated in the round.
The latest capital round marks the largest ideation stage investment raised by Baltic founders.
The lead investor
Fiedler Capital is a venture capital firm based in Budapest, Hungary. The VC invests in pre-venture, leading or co-leading pre-seed and early seed deals. Fiedler Capital, which is sector agnostic, writes cheque between €50-750k.
Robert Hegedues of Fiedler Capital says, “We all take for granted the world built around us. The planes you fly on. The cars you drive. The phone you’re probably reading this on. The Trace.Space team has taken one of the most exciting new technologies that will change the world, AI, and is building a tool for the hidden world of the engineers creating our future. I couldn’t be more excited to invest in them.”
Helping engineers become more productive
Unlike modern productivity tools like Slack or Figma, Trace.Space says real-world engineering projects run primarily on outdated enterprise software with obsolete UX, monolithic architecture, and expensive annual licence fees.
Janis Vavere, Trace.Space Co-Founder and CEO says, “The tools used by engineering teams for requirements management are outdated, inconvenient, and cumbersome. It’s a billion-dollar market that has been neglected because it’s invisible and unsexy, while software for later steps of product development has already advanced.”
“Trace.Space will start with modernising the basics, requirements management, and eventually, plans to do the same with further steps of product development,” Vavare adds.
Product development tool that’s 10X faster
Founded by Janis Vavere, Mikus Krams, and Karlis Broders in 2022, Trace.Space has built AI-powered API-first software for complex engineering product development.
The software enables industrial and automotive product manufacturers with AI-powered tools for managing 80 per cent of the product development lifecycle.
Trace.Space plans to debut its first product iteration launch in Q2, 2023. It will come with requirements management for engineering teams – the process of collecting, documenting, and validating requirements for the product being built.
Trace.Space reveals that the requirements management solution comes with GPT algorithm integration, which will help engineering teams document and revise requirements 10x faster.
As a result, consumers can expect higher-quality products with shorter time-to-market, claims the company.
According to the company, its software architecture was created for a non-linear process of product development, enabling customers to create an unlimited number of product variations.
