Valeo and Zuken announced a major strategic partnership to create the “Zuken Valeo InnoLab” program. The collaboration will develop an advanced, open AI-assisted electronic design platform. The partnership combines Zuken’s AI roadmap and EDA software with Valeo’s “AI Agents” and industrial expertise. The goal is to integrate AI across the entire electronic design flow to reduce design times and ensure robustness.
“For Valeo, Zuken is much more than a software provider; it is a true innovation partner,” said 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,” said 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 covers key areas of the design flow:
- Functional Generative Design: Valeo deploys generative AI in Zuken’s System Planner to 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 traceability for the Automotive SPICE 4.0 (ASPICE4.0) Hardware Engineering process.
- Assisted Detailed Design: Valeo’s AI Agents assist engineers in real time with solution searches, hardware rule verification, and constraint implementation. Zuken develops native AI functions to accelerate schematic entry using Valeo’s standardized database.
- Auto-Placement and Routing: Zuken’s Design Force engine with AI Place and Route (AI-PR) algorithms is used. Valeo applies its SDK to train the AI on automotive industry constraints for “First Time Right” execution.
The partnership focuses on automotive electronic design challenges driven by increasing complexity in vehicle electrification and advanced driver-assistance systems.
