Omaha’s MultiMechanics Raises $1.9M in Seed Funding

MultiMechanics, an Omaha startup and leading developer of virtual testing software designed to help companies reduce physical prototyping and testing, has announced it raised $1.9 million in new financing, with investments from Solvay Ventures, Anzu Partners, and Invest Nebraska. The new investment will be used to grow the company’s engineering team, further its product development…

MultiMechanics, an Omaha startup and leading developer of virtual testing software designed to help companies reduce physical prototyping and testing, has announced it raised $1.9 million in new financing, with investments from Solvay Ventures, Anzu Partners, and Invest Nebraska. The new investment will be used to grow the company’s engineering team, further its product development pipeline, and expand its position in the commercial marketplace.

“Our customers greatly benefit from the software systems we develop,” said Leandro Castro, co-founder and Chief Executive Officer of MultiMechanics. “I am delighted that we have broad support from these new investors to help us continue to grow our team, our product offerings, and our business.”

MultiMechanics provides Computer-Aided Engineering (CAE) solutions to help companies optimize the design and manufacturing process of innovative products. Their software enables the modeling and failure prediction of complex materials and serves a large range of industries including composites, polymers, automotive and aerospace.

“This investment round will not only help us maintain our projected growth path,” said Flavio Souza, co-founder and Chief Technology Officer, “but also ensure we attract the best talent both here in Omaha and from outside of the region, so we can keep pushing the boundaries of our technology.”

Financing from Anzu Partners, with locations on the coasts, and Belgium-based Solvay Ventures is another example of venture capital flowing into Nebraska from outside the state.

“Nebraska has regularly been attracting investment from places like San Francisco, New York, Chicago, and Texas, but it’s always exciting when an international investment fund leads the round and pours money into our local economy,” said Brock Smith, Senior Associate with Invest Nebraska. “It happened last year with Blue Prairie Brands,  and it’s encouraging that we had a company do it again this year.”

The investment comes following a successful partnership between MultiMechanics and Solvay to model complex composite structures used in the automotive and aerospace industries.

“Our Composite Materials Global Business Unit carefully reviewed all modeling solutions and, by far, MultiMechanics provided the best results,” said Nicolas Cudré Mauroux, Solvay’s Research & Innovation Group General Manager (CTO). “We are confident this software can accelerate innovation in complex materials and the penetration of composites in the automotive and aerospace industries. The accuracy and speed afforded by MultiMechanics, and its efficient integration with commonly used commercial finite element software packages are changing the way we develop new materials and interact with our customers.”

The company was founded by Castro and Souza in 2010. Both completed undergraduate degrees at Federal University of Ceara in Brazil. They found their way to the University of Nebraska-Lincoln through a collaborative program between the two schools run by then-Dean of the College of Engineering, Dr. David Allen.

“Dr. Allen is a great professor and researcher, the best I ever had,” Souza said. “UNL is an excellent university so we decided to pursue our PhDs under his supervision.”

The two didn’t actually meet until they came to the United States.

“Interestingly, we didn’t even meet each other in Brazil,” Souza said. “We first met each other in Lincoln during a research group meeting.”

Smith views this as a great success story.

“Leandro and Flavio are perfect examples of the American Dream,” he said. “They both immigrated to the United States from Brazil, created an incredible company, and are now able to employ a lot of talented people in Omaha.”

More about MultiMechanics can be found in SPN stories from July 2014 and November 2015.

Rod Armstrong is Vice President of Strategic Partnerships for AIM in Lincoln, Nebraska. He is a regular contributor to Silicon Prairie News.

This story is part of the AIM Archive

This story is part of the AIM Institute Archive on Silicon Prairie News. AIM gifted SPN to the Nebraska Journalism Trust in January 2023. Learn more about SPN’s origin »

Get the latest news and events from Nebraska’s entrepreneurship and innovation community delivered straight to your inbox every Wednesday.