Waterloo student startup Simantic raises $600K, joins Y Combinator
What's the deal? SimanticDealroom has a profile for this one. Try Dealroom →, a hardware simulation startup founded by two University of Waterloo Engineering students, has raised roughly $600,000 in seed funding and won spots in both the VelocityDealroom has a profile for this one. Try Dealroom → incubator and Y Combinator's Fall 2026 cohort. Velocity and Y Combinator backed the round.
What's the endgame? The company builds simulation technology that lets engineers and AI systems build, test, and validate firmware in virtual environments before physical hardware exists. It plans to use the funding to expand its platform, support customers, and accelerate product development.
Why now? The idea grew out of the founders' co-op terms at Tesla, Neuralink, and other hardware organisations, where they repeatedly waited weeks or months for physical hardware before testing firmware. That bottleneck spans automotive, robotics, consumer electronics, and semiconductor development.
Seungmin Hong (BASc '26) launched Simantic in 2025, with Ahnaf Shahriar joining as co-founder in 2026. Before the incubator, Hong took part in Velocity's Cornerstone program, gathering customer insights and earning recognition as one of its top students.
What are they building? "Today, AI can already help write hardware and firmware code, but testing remains largely manual and dependent on physical devices," Hong says. "We're building the infrastructure that lets engineers and AI validate those systems in simulation before hardware is ever manufactured."
The signal: The Y Combinator backing gives an early-stage, student-founded venture notable investor validation less than a year after launch. It reflects growing interest in tools that pair AI with hardware development, targeting a testing gap that still relies on manual, device-dependent workflows.
Image credit: Generated with Gemini
