Paris, Yokohama: Valeo, a global leader in mobility technologies, and Zuken, a pioneer in Electronic Design Automation (EDA) software, announce a major strategic partnership. In their joint “Zuken Valeo InnoLab” program, the two companies will create the most advanced and open AI-assisted electronic design platform on the market.
This partnership combines Zuken’s cutting-edge AI roadmap with Valeo’s “AI Agents” and industrial expertise, creating an ecosystem where the tool and the engineer collaborate in real time.
“For Valeo, Zuken is much more than a software provider; it is a true innovation partner,” says Christophe Le Ligné, Vice President Research and Development at Valeo. “The power of Zuken’s AI roadmap, combined with the exceptional openness of its architecture, allows us to hybridize our own artificial intelligence tools with their engine. This win-win partnership is the best way to tackle the challenge of automotive complexity by slashing our design times while guaranteeing 100% robustness.”
“Our vision at Zuken has always been to provide intelligent tools that adapt to our customers’ most complex challenges,” states Ryosuke Takagi , Executive Officer, General Manager of R&D Division at Zuken. “Collaborating with a technological leader like Valeo pushes our ‘Autonomous Brain’ roadmap to its highest level of performance. By opening our System Planner, Design Gateway, and Design Force solutions to Valeo’s AI agents, we demonstrate that the true power of AI in engineering lies in the alliance between a high-performance software engine and expert industrial know-how.”
The co-innovation is structured around the design flow and combines the unique strengths of each partner:
- Functional Generative Design: Using Zuken’s System Planner, Valeo deploys its generative AI to instantly create and evaluate optimal multi-criteria architectures based on Valeo’s standards.
- Digital Continuity: Zuken’s open platform ensures integration with Valeo’s ecosystem and digital continuity for full traceability for the Automotive SPICE 4.0 (ASPICE4.0) HWE (Hardware Engineering process group) standard. Valeo’s AI processes data and reinjects it as automated actions in the platform.
- Assisted Detailed Design: Valeo integrates “AI Agents” (virtual copilots) to assist engineers in real time with solution searches, Hardware rule verification, and constraint implementation while Zuken develops native AI functions to accelerate schematic entry using Valeo’s standardized database.
Auto-Placement and Routing: Physical integration relies on Zuken’s Design Force engine which offers some of the most powerful AI Place and Route (AI-PR) algorithms on the market. To guarantee a “First Time Right” execution, Valeo uses Zuken’s SDK to act directly within the tool and “train” this AI on the extreme constraints of the automotive industry.
