San Francisco-based Itera has launched a printed circuit board (PCB) prototyping solution that claims to make modifying PCBs as simple as modifying software.
The company has completed a $12 million seed funding round, with investors including Upfront Ventures, Costanoa Ventures, and Colle Capital.
Itera CEO and co-founder AJ Cooper stated, “For decades, software developers have been able to write, test, and iterate code in real time. Now, Itera enables real-time design and iteration for hardware. Hardware development has always been a high-barrier process because circuits cannot be easily modified once they are built; modifications are time-consuming and expensive. Itera drastically simplifies the hardware development process. Engineers can modify circuits and complete retesting in less than the time it takes to drink a cup of coffee—a first in the industry.”
This technology utilizes the electrowetting effect to manipulate liquid metal alloys on a glass substrate. Driven by an electric field, liquid metal migration enables circuit routing to be formed and reconfigured within one minute. Engineers can reconfigure circuits on a physical circuit board with real components without needing to reproduce a new PCB.
This solution is essentially a reprogrammable multilayer substrate combining glass and liquid metal, specifically designed for rapid prototyping.
Itera operates on a Hardware as a Service (EaaS) model: customers provide their own components, which Itera assembles onto its proprietary multilayer substrate at its safety testing center in the United States.
Customers can remotely modify and debug the hardware and software repeatedly until the design is validated and ready for mass production.
Traditional simulation software cannot fully reproduce the actual operating state of components, while Itera's liquid circuit board, equipped with real components, presents true electrical characteristics. Engineers can also perform signal probing on any circuit node within the circuit board, without being limited by exposed test points.