Quilter

What is Quilter?

Quilter is an AI service that automates printed circuit board (PCB) placement and routing, returning review-ready layout candidates in hours rather than weeks. Engineers prepare a project in their usual ECAD tool, upload it, and receive layouts back in that tool’s native format.

The company calls its approach physics-driven AI. Its engine is trained with reinforcement learning on synthetic boards scored against physical rules, not on human-designed boards, and candidates are checked for signal integrity, impedance, thermal behaviour and design rules. The site says most boards go through two to five review cycles before an engineer is satisfied.

Quilter was founded in 2019 by Sergiy Nesterenko, a former SpaceX engineer, and is based in Los Angeles. In October 2025 it announced a $25 million Series B led by Index Ventures, bringing total funding to $40 million. It has no link to Quilter plc, the London-listed UK wealth manager.

Key Features

Quilter’s autonomous placement and routing matters most, because it removes the slowest manual stage of board design while keeping the result inside your existing CAD workflow.

• Autonomous placement and routing: The engine places components and routes traces from your prepared design, outline and constraints. In a published case, AI handled about 98 per cent of placement and routing on a two-board computer design.
• Many layout candidates: Each run produces multiple candidate layouts, with the homepage citing hundreds. You compare trade-offs side by side, pick the strongest, adjust constraints and resubmit as often as you need.
• Physics-based checks: Candidates are evaluated against physical constraints rather than geometry alone. Checks cover signal integrity, impedance control, thermal behaviour and design rules, so weak options are filtered before you review them.
• Native ECAD round trip: Projects come from and return to Altium Designer, Cadence Allegro or OrCAD, Siemens Xpedition and KiCad. Output stays in the native format, so your team finishes the board in familiar software without a proprietary file lock-in.
• Published board limits: The current engine targets boards with 100 to 1,000 components and works best with 2,000 to 5,000 pins to route. BGA fan-outs are in beta, while blind and buried vias, length matching and RF are listed as in development.
• Cloud or self-hosted deployment: The standard service runs in an isolated workspace on AWS with SOC 2 Type II compliance, TLS 1.3 and AES-256 encryption. A self-hosted Kubernetes option, including air-gapped setups, keeps design data inside your own infrastructure.

Pros

Speed is the main reason to choose Quilter: it turns weeks of manual layout into hours of AI work plus human clean-up.

• Large time savings: A widely reported case cut an estimated 428 hours of layout to about 38.5 hours of human clean-up. Hardware teams under schedule pressure gain the most from that reduction.
• Generous free tier: Academic, personal and eligible small-team users get unlimited iterations and all product features at no cost. Eligibility requires fewer than 10 people and under $50,000 in revenue, per the free plan page.
• Keeps your toolchain: Results return as native files for Altium, Cadence, Siemens and KiCad. Engineers keep their existing libraries and review habits instead of learning a new editor.
• Fair project pricing: Paid use is charged per board by the number of unrouted pins, not per seat. Unlimited iterations, parallel jobs and onboarding on your first board are included in every project.
• Strong data controls: Paid designs are not used for training, and a self-hosted deployment is available. Defence, aerospace and other regulated teams gain a route to use it under strict data rules.

Cons

Quilter’s biggest drawback is that commercial prices are not published, so you must speak to sales before you can budget for a paid project.

• No public price list: The pricing page explains the per-pin model but shows no dollar figures. Expect a sales call for any commercial board, and note that self-hosting costs more again.
• Placement and routing only: Quilter does not generate schematics and offers limited simulation or circuit analysis. You still need a full ECAD tool and your own design expertise around it.
• Advanced features still maturing: Blind and buried vias, length matching and RF layouts are listed as in development. High-speed or RF-heavy boards may need substantial manual work for now.
• Engineer review still required: Candidates need human checking, and the site says most boards take two to five cycles. Treat outputs as strong drafts that a qualified designer signs off before fabrication.
• Free tier data trade-off: The free plan page says board metadata and input files may be used to generate training puzzles. Teams with confidential designs should use a paid or self-hosted project instead.

Who is Using Quilter?

Quilter is used mainly by hardware engineering teams that need first layouts faster than their in-house or contract designers can deliver.

• Hardware engineers: Product teams upload boards to get candidate layouts within hours. They use the saved time to explore more design options before committing to fabrication.
• Aerospace and defence groups: The Series B announcement says aerospace contractors use Quilter designs in spaceflight qualification tests. Self-hosting helps them meet strict data and export rules.
• Automotive suppliers: A global Tier-1 automotive supplier is reported to use it to shorten test iterations. Faster layouts let such teams run more hardware experiments per cycle.
• Students and small start-ups: Academic users and teams under 10 people use the free tier for real boards. It gives them automated layout without paying for a specialist designer.

Pricing

Quilter is freemium: non-commercial and small-team use is free, while commercial boards are priced per project by unrouted pin count (official pricing pages, October 2026).

A project is defined by its board outline, bill of materials and pin count, and a BOM change of more than 10 per cent counts as a new project. The company also mentions start-up pricing for funded hard-tech firms.

Disclaimer: because Quilter quotes each board individually, your cost will depend on pin count and deployment choice, so get a written quote before committing.

What Makes Quilter Unique?

Whole-board generation scored against physics separates Quilter from classic autorouters, which route track by track under rules a designer sets. It returns several complete candidates per run, so you compare real trade-offs before refining one in your CAD tool.

Its training method is also unusual. The company says the engine learns from synthetic boards judged against physical laws rather than from customer or human designs, which supports its claim that paid project data is never used for training.

Compatibilities and Integrations

Quilter connects to the main professional ECAD tools and returns native files, with cloud or self-hosted deployment for different security needs.

• ECAD tools: Altium Designer, Cadence Allegro and OrCAD, Siemens Xpedition and KiCad, according to the homepage and Series B announcement.
• Platform: Browser-based web app, so there is nothing to install for the cloud service.
• Deployment: Managed AWS cloud with SOC 2 Type II, or self-hosted Kubernetes, including air-gapped environments.
• Files and ownership: You upload a prepared project and download native design files, and the pricing FAQ confirms the project files remain yours.

Quilter Tutorials

A first Quilter run starts in your own ECAD tool, where the board outline, parts and constraints are prepared.

1. Sign up for the free tier, or contact sales for a commercial project.
2. In your ECAD tool, finish the schematic, board outline and fixed parts such as connectors.
3. Upload the project to Quilter and set stack-up, design rules and any pre-routed areas.
4. Start the run and wait for the candidate layouts, usually a matter of hours.
5. Compare candidates, adjust constraints and resubmit if none meets your needs.
6. Download the chosen layout in native format and complete final checks before fabrication.

How We Rated It

Quilter scores 3.9 out of 5, earned by strong features, security and speed, and held back by setup effort and unpublished commercial prices.

Summary

Quilter suits hardware teams that want AI first drafts of PCB layouts while keeping Altium, Cadence, Siemens or KiCad as their main tool. Its main limitation is that commercial prices come only from a sales quote. Every result still needs an engineer’s review before fabrication, and RF or length-matched designs remain in development. Start with a simple board on the free tier, or a non-confidential test project, to judge the output before paying.