NEOCAD raises €550,000 from HabiSmart and 40Jemz Ventures to develop AI for mechanical design and strengthen its manufacturing presence.

Legnano (MI), April 9, 2026 — NEOCAD, an Italian startup founded in late 2024 to apply AI to mechanical design, announces a €550,000 pre-seed round, subscribed by 40Jemz Ventures and HabiSmart, the PropTech and sustainable construction programme in CDP Venture Capital’s National Accelerator Network, together with Zest, Coima, Ariston and Nova Capital. The round follows an earlier investment in the same acceleration programme. Funds will support platform development, integration with CAD and PLM systems used by Italian and international manufacturers, and commercial product validation.

An AI Agent for mechanical engineering

NEOCAD combines AI, industrial design and software development expertise to apply generative artificial intelligence to CAD design.

Three young co-founders lead NEOCAD: Luca Licciulli, CEO, and Alessandro Toia, COO & Head of Sales, with backgrounds in economics and management, and Ahmed Shahhat, CTO, who leads the platform’s engineering architecture. The platform is an AI Agent designed to integrate with corporate CAD and PLM systems, enabling design-history queries, searches for existing components and generation of new models from text inputs. “We transform a company’s design knowledge into an accessible and queryable asset, drastically reducing time and errors in the most critical phases of the process. This round allows us to accelerate on two concrete fronts: the technological development of the platform, with a focus on integration with systems already in use in manufacturing companies, and commercial validation in the Italian market. The future of design is generative, and we are already in that future. Now we want to bring Italian companies into it as well.” emphasizes Luca Licciulli, CEO of NEOCAD.

NEOCAD already works with industrial companies, including international automotive groups, to reduce technical information retrieval time and improve design processes.

Zest and HabiSmart

Zest selected NEOCAD for HabiSmart, where it was recognised among the most promising startups. “We chose to invest in Neocad even before the company was incorporated, betting on a team that immediately impressed us with their ambition to become a global reference point in their sector and not limit themselves to building a good solution. During the acceleration program, they demonstrated their ability to sustain this ambition through rapid execution, a strong learning capacity, and openness to dialogue, quickly engaging with the market and transforming their vision into a product ready for enterprise clients in just a few months .” comments Andrea Peroni, Portfolio Manager of Zest and HabiSmart. “This round will enable the company to accelerate the go-to-market of the product, which has already demonstrated its effectiveness in solving a real and urgent problem in industrial engineering and product design—a field still underserved and difficult to innovate due to the presence of deeply entrenched legacy tools, but which now offers enormous potential thanks to AI solutions like Neocad’s.”

40Jemz Ventures

40Jemz Ventures SpA joins Habitech in the round. Capitalised by Ultra-High-Net-Worth Individuals, the holding invests in early-stage startups across sectors. Its team of former founders and finance experts focuses on close founder relationships and operational efficiency. “At 40Jemz, we look for companies capable of transforming technological innovation into measurable competitive advantage for industry. What struck us about NeoCad was their pragmatic approach: not a generic tool, but a copilot that enters CAD workflows and aims to free up technical time from repetitive activities, improving the speed and quality of iterations. This application of generative AI to a complex sector like mechanical design is a concrete response to the efficiency needs of our manufacturing companies. We are excited to support Luca, Alessandro, and Ahmed on this journey, convinced that their execution capability will make the difference in redefining CAD design standards.” concludes David Erba, Co-Managing Partner of 40JEMZ.

About NEOCAD

Founded in 2024, NEOCAD develops generative AI software for CAD design, available in Cloud or On-Premise deployments. The platform centralises and indexes models and technical know-how in a queryable knowledge base. It helps manufacturing, design and R&D teams find existing solutions, simulate alternatives and support technical decisions, reducing repetitive tasks and duplication.

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