Atech secures pre-seed funding from Sequoia, a16z, and Lovable
▼ Summary
– Atech, a Copenhagen-based AI hardware startup, has raised an undisclosed pre-seed round from Nordic Makers, Emblem, Lovable, and the Sequoia and Andreessen Horowitz Scout Funds.
– Atech’s platform allows users to describe a hardware concept in natural language and receive a working prototype, a concept its founders call “vibe-engineering” for hardware.
– Lovable CEO Anton Osika personally endorsed Atech, comparing its potential in hardware to Lovable’s success in democratizing web application development.
– The investor syndicate includes scout fund participation from Sequoia and a16z, which provides signaling value and proximity to these firms rather than direct investment.
– Atech aims to close the hardware-software prototyping gap by building missing abstraction layers, addressing the challenge that hardware creation remains slow and specialized compared to software.
A Copenhagen-based startup is betting that the barrier between a hardware idea and a working prototype can be erased with nothing more than natural language. Atech, an early-stage AI hardware company, has closed an undisclosed pre-seed round backed by an impressive syndicate that includes Nordic Makers, Emblem, Lovable, the Sequoia Scout Fund, and the Andreessen Horowitz Scout Fund. Lovable’s CEO, Anton Osika, also personally invested in the round and offered a ringing endorsement of the team.
Founded by Vladimir Baran (CCO), Tomas Erik Harmer (CEO), and David Stålmarck (CTO), Atech is pioneering what it calls “vibe-engineering” for hardware. The platform allows users to describe a physical device in plain language and receive a fully functional prototype, with all the underlying technical heavy lifting handled by the system. The inspiration is clear: Lovable, the Swedish startup that lets non-developers build full-stack web apps through simple prompts, skyrocketed to a valuation north of $1 billion after its 2024 launch. Atech aims to replicate that success in the physical world.
Osika’s backing is the most telling signal in the announcement. “I am seeing the same patterns Lovable had but for hardware,” he said. “I’m really excited to see Atech’s journey. The team is one of a kind.” This endorsement from the creator of the software-vibe-coding category frames Atech explicitly as the hardware equivalent of an already-proven concept.
The problem Atech is tackling is both real and widely acknowledged. Building a hardware prototype has traditionally demanded years of specialized engineering knowledge or substantial financial resources to hire that expertise. A developer can spin up and deploy a web application in a weekend using modern tools. The equivalent end-to-end hardware experience simply does not exist. This asymmetry has kept hardware innovation concentrated among a small group of specialists and well-funded companies, while software development has been democratized through layers of abstraction that eliminated the need to understand compilers, memory management, or network protocols.
Harmer described the gap succinctly: “Software has an entire stack of tools that lets a teenager build an app in a weekend. Hardware doesn’t. We’re still working at the first level of abstraction. Atech is building the missing layers, so creating in the physical world can feel as fast and joyful as writing code.”
The investor lineup is notable for a pre-seed round, but it requires careful context. The Sequoia Scout Fund and the Andreessen Horowitz Scout Fund are programs through which scouts,typically founders and operators in the firms’ networks,make small investments, often between $5,000 and $100,000, on behalf of the firm. Scout fund participation does not equate to a direct investment from Sequoia or a16z in the traditional sense, nor does it guarantee follow-on commitments from the parent firms. For Atech, the value lies primarily in signaling and proximity to two of the world’s most prominent venture capital names.
Nordic Makers, a Copenhagen-based angel collective with deep roots in the Danish and Nordic startup ecosystem, also participated, alongside Emblem, a European seed fund. Lovable’s involvement as a corporate backer adds a strategic layer: the company has a direct commercial interest in seeing hardware development democratized, as it would expand the market for Lovable-style interfaces.
The broader thesis Atech is operating within,what the company calls “Physical AI”,is gaining significant traction. Nvidia’s 2025 annual report identified Physical AI as its next major market opportunity, encompassing intelligent systems that sense, interact with, and act upon the physical world, including robotics, autonomous vehicles, drones, and industrial systems. As these applications multiply, the ability to rapidly prototype physical hardware shifts from a niche skill to a competitive advantage.
Whether a natural-language-to-prototype platform can truly close the hardware-software gap depends on how far Atech’s abstraction stack can reach. PCB layout, component selection, firmware, and manufacturing considerations are all domains where the penalty for failure is a physical object that does not work,not a bug fix pushed in a pull request. That is a fundamentally harder problem than the one Lovable solved. The answer will come from Atech’s first customers.
(Source: The Next Web)