DesignVerse raises USD $5.5 million in seed funding

DesignVerse has raised USD $5.5 million in seed funding following work on software used by EUROCONTROL.

The Bucharest-based startup develops AI software for organisations updating older systems in sectors including aviation, banking, cyber security and public infrastructure. The new funding will be used to expand its engineering team and support growth in Europe and the US.

Investors in the seed round include Begin Capital, Gapminder VC and Underline Ventures, alongside angel investors linked to Adobe, LSEG and UiPath. Before this round, DesignVerse had raised USD $850,000 in pre-seed funding.

Founded by Andrei Manolache and Robert Dragutoiu, the company focuses on software projects where reliability, security and regulatory requirements limit the use of more general AI coding tools. Its platform uses a customer's own documentation, design systems, component libraries and technical rules to generate software that matches existing architecture.

One early customer is EUROCONTROL, the pan-European aviation organisation that coordinates air traffic across Europe. DesignVerse said it upgraded one of EUROCONTROL's legacy applications, replacing a 15-year-old system in just over a month instead of the six months expected through conventional development methods.

According to DesignVerse, the software now supports aviation systems used in airports and air traffic control operations across Europe. Those systems contribute to journeys taken by tens of millions of airline passengers each year.

Early traction

The startup said it surpassed USD $1.1 million in annual recurring revenue in less than five months, all from enterprise customers in sensitive sectors.

Its founders bring backgrounds in large-scale software and design. Manolache previously worked as a product design lead at Oracle on the Redwood design system used across the company's software products, while Dragutoiu has worked on complex engineering projects including self-driving automotive software and AI engineering platforms.

DesignVerse argues that large organisations have long faced a gap between what design teams specify and what engineering teams build. In heavily regulated environments, that mismatch can slow delivery, create rework and increase the risk of inconsistency across systems.

"Large organizations still lose enormous amounts of time translating design work into production software. Designers create intent, but engineers must manually reinterpret and rebuild it, which leads to inconsistency and delays.

"DesignVerse removes that friction entirely, allowing teams to generate functional enterprise applications directly from their design systems, validating the behavior instantly with business stakeholders and bridging the gap between," said Andrei Manolache, chief executive officer of DesignVerse.

The company said this approach can cut development timelines by as much as five times compared with standard enterprise software upgrade processes. It is pitching that offer at a time when many large organisations are trying to modernise long-running systems without disrupting operations.

Aviation use

EUROCONTROL described the work as part of a broader digital transformation effort, saying DesignVerse helped it move faster while maintaining the standards required in aviation software.

"Aviation is an industry where the innovation cycle is generally slower compared to others. At EUROCONTROL, we have embarked on our largest digital transformation programme to date - the Integrated Network Management (iNM) programme - aimed at reshaping this paradigm by transforming not only our technologies but also 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 the reliability, safety and security that remain the highest priority for our sector. We value such partnerships that contribute to our efforts to drive innovation and leverage AI at scale across the European aviation ecosystem, and ultimately improve the quality of air travel for the entire community," said EUROCONTROL.

For DesignVerse, the aviation project provides an early reference customer in a field where procurement cycles are long and software changes face close scrutiny. That may help as it seeks contracts in other industries that also rely on legacy technology and strict operational controls.

Dragutoiu said general AI coding tools are not built for those conditions. "Many AI coding tools available today are designed primarily for experimentation or rapid prototyping.

"Enterprises operate complex infrastructure and legacy systems, often in mission-critical environments. Software generated by AI must integrate with existing architectures and run safely in production. Our models are designed specifically for those constraints.

"Our technology builds a system-level context layer from each customer's design systems, component libraries, and technical documentation, enabling software to be produced seamlessly in alignment with existing architecture and engineering standards, without months of custom integrations," said Robert Dragutoiu, chief technology officer of DesignVerse.

Manolache framed the target market in similar terms. "Organisations running critical infrastructure cannot rely on vibe coding tools. They need software that is reliable, auditable, and built around their existing systems.

"That's exactly the type of environment for which DesignVerse was designed," he said.