Hot AI Summer

As we enter the dog days of summer, the heat has not put a damper on innovation in the engineering software space. The past few months there have been announcements from most of the major vendors in the CAD, CAM and simulation space—new products, updated products, and new AI functionality.

The latter has been especially prevalent. 

 

Both Siemens and Hexagon held their user conferences over the summer, and both made major announcements around AI. Siemens unveiled a new EDA solution with AI capabilities for the semiconductor and PCB industries. Hexagon’s Manufacturing Intelligence Division unveiled an update of its ESPRIT EDGE CAM platform with AI services to help make CAM programming more accessible. Hexagon is also using NVIDIA’s AI supercomputers to train and fine-tune its AEON humanoid robot. 

Rescale is integrating its CAE Hub with NVIDIA’s industrial AI cloud to help European engineers scale their efforts. Authentise (which leverages AI in its products) is offering its Flows manufacturing solutions bundled with Autodesk Fusion.

PLM vendor Duro has reconfigured its cloud-based product with new AI features, and Jotne Connect also launched a new AI unit for its PLM, digital twin, and model-based systems engineering (MBSE) solutions.

Factorial, which focuses on solid-state battery technology, announced an AI-powered simulation platform called Gammatron to accelerate battery development. Japanese manufacturer MISUMI acquired the Fictiv AI-based supply chain platform.

On the hardware front, vendors like BOXX, Dell, Lenovo, and Supermicro have all announced new workstations and servers to support AI applications, and Synopsys is collaborating with Samsung Foundry to drive faster and more efficient design of semiconductor solutions for AI applications. 

SimScale, meanwhile, released the results of its State of Engineering AI 2025 report, which indicate that there is a significant gap between the promise of AI in engineering applications and actual results. According to SimScale, just 3% of firms are actually achieving their goals with AI. They are largely stymied by siloed data, legacy desktop CAE platforms, and misaligned management and engineering team priorities.

While this issue of Digital Engineering focuses on medical device design, we have also included some features that reflect this industry-wide focus on AI. PLM solutions are an obvious target for this type of technology, and our coverage this month includes a look at new innovations in the PLM space that incorporate artificial intelligence. Senior Editor Kenneth Wong, meanwhile , explains how AI and reduced order model utilization in simulation means it’s more important than ever for engineers to understand uncertainty.

We hope you enjoy the issue—and have a great rest of the summer.