Deeptech company moves out of stealth taking world-first approach to motor design.
London, 20th February: Monumo, a technology business that couples deeptech AI innovation with traditional engineering expertise to redesign the electric motor, has emerged from stealth. Monumo’s patented technology has already produced a deeptech-generated design for a switched reluctance motor (SRM*) which reduces torque ripple by 50% across the drive cycle making it significantly smoother and quieter. Monumo’s world-first approach to SRMs with its simulation, optimisation, and prototype framework, demonstrates the potential for wider applications across a wide range of the electric motors market.
Founded in 2021, the Cambridge and Coventry based startup has a mission to move the needle on decarbonisation and is initially focused on the global EV market, which is projected to reach $623bn in 2024. Through its unique combination of AI, ML and motor design ability, Monumo’s proprietary technology runs around 10 million simulations per day to test potential iterations of the motor design. In turn, the platform can identify the optimal parameters for the specific use-case whether that is reducing cost, creating efficiencies or improving sustainability.
Monumo recently raised a £10.5m seed round from angels and has signed NDAs with numerous tier one engineering companies and Original Equipment Manufacturers (OEMs). The company is led by CEO and founder, Dominic Vergine, a serial entrepreneur and former VP Sustainability at Arm, and CTO Jaroslaw Rzepecki, PhD, who previously held software engineering positions at Siemens, Microsoft Research and Arm. Leveraging multidisciplinary expertise across its 30 strong team, Monumo brings together automotive engineers, data scientists, physicists, deeptech experts, and entrepreneurs. Across the team, half have PhDs in physics, electronics, ML and computer science, and engineering.
Dominic Vergine, CEO and Founder at Monumo, said: “We’re extremely excited to be entering this next phase of our business journey. At Monumo, we are driven by a desire to create a sustainable future and we know that the EV market is a crucial entry point for our technology. By partnering with OEMs and tier one engineering companies, our unique combination of simulation, ML, AI and motor design ability can facilitate genuine near-term impact in the EV industry. These incredible results from our motor simulations are just the start as we look to create genuine system level optimisation for the first time. Naturally we’re excited about the company’s next phase of growth.”
Santiago Matheus, Managing Partner and Founder at LQD VC, said: “Our contemporary lives are built on an almost unimaginable pyramid of inventions, all of which were thought of as impossible before they became essential. I believe that in short order, Monumo will show the world that the impossible efficiencies they promise are not only possible, but of fundamental importance to how much impact we have on the planet. It’s hard to overstate the role we anticipate this unique combination of technologies will have in the future of engineering disciplines and beyond.”
*A switched reluctance motor is an electric motor that runs by reluctance torque and is a subgroup of reluctance motors. Traditionally they have been heavily used in industrial applications where noise is not considered an issue because of the benefit they bring of being low cost. They also benefit in not needing permanent – or rare earth – magnets.
