Every Design Change. Validated Instantly.

Onyx is an AI-native engineering orchestration platform. A designer moves a surface; every affected discipline gets its answer in seconds, comments land directly on the geometry, and the decision and version stay attached to the project.

checks
Aero engineerrear spoiler

Illustrative view of review inside OnyxHub.

The problem

One change. Seven consequences. Six departments.

Developing a car — or almost any complex physical product — is relentlessly iterative. A single design change touches everything, and every discipline has its own engineers, its own tools and its own simulation process.

AerodynamicsCoolingCrashNVH ManufacturingRegulationsPackaging

Simulation speed is not the real problem. Engineering knowledge arrives too late, and it is scattered across departments.

What Onyx does

Engineering intelligence moves to the front of the process.

Physics AI can now predict physical behaviour in seconds instead of solving every high-fidelity simulation from scratch. That makes a different way of working possible for the first time.

01

A design change happens

A designer edits the geometry. Nothing has to be scheduled, requested or waited for.

02

Every discipline answers at once

Aero, cooling, crash, NVH, manufacturing and regulations return their first verdict in seconds.

03

Review happens on the geometry

Engineers and designers comment on the model itself, in place, instead of in a meeting three weeks later.

04

Validation where it matters

High-fidelity simulation is spent only on the questions that genuinely need it.

05

Decision and version are tracked

The reasoning, the result and the new design version stay attached to the project history.

We are not replacing simulation tools. We orchestrate them. Onyx connects design changes, engineering models, simulations, people and project history into one workflow — the layer that decides what runs, when, and what it meant.

From the field

We asked the people who live this every day what breaks, and what they would need.

Conversations in spring 2026 with exterior designers, studio engineers, programme managers, design directors and design researchers working across German and Chinese manufacturers. What follows is what they told us, in their words.

The problems they described

feasibility

The checks are where the money burns

Technical feasibility checks are the headache, that's really frustrating, you burn the money in this field.
Academic lead, vehicle design programme, German university

manual work

Compliance is checked by hand, and it moves

I have to open the model and check manually, and I often miss something because the requirement changed.
Studio engineer, Chinese EV OEM

experience gap

Knowing what will bite you takes years

Most designers need years of experience to know something's going to be an issue later.
Programme manager, Chinese EV OEM

waiting

Directions stay alive that should be dead

He can kill some direction immediately instead of waiting weeks for a full simulation.
Studio engineer, Chinese EV OEM

ping-pong

Work arrives already compromised

If there was a base where everything got checked first before coming to us, that would be wonderful.
Interior designer, ex-Hyundai and Mercedes-Benz

no memory

Nothing carries across projects

You could check for similarities to earlier ones, comparing to former vehicles.
Research group leader, vehicle design methodology, German technical university
If you don't develop it, somebody else will. Automotive designer, career across five manufacturers

“If you can cut two weeks off the aerodynamic process, that's definitely worth more than 20, 30, 40, 50 thousand euros.”

Academic lead, vehicle design programme, German university

“It would be kind of a dream land if I could tell the designer, as he's pushing the volume in or out here, what the impact on drag is right there.”

Studio engineer, Chinese EV OEM

What they demanded

Never cage the designer

I don't want to be limited as a designer in my creativity.
Automotive designer, career across five manufacturers

Fix it without breaking the design

Suggest an improvement without harming the main design theme.
Show-car designer and modeller, 25 years

Be honest about resolution

Early on we're off by 10 to 15 millimetres and that's fine. Later I need to trust the data.
Studio engineer, Chinese EV OEM

Compare options, don't claim absolutes

Relative comparison between options rather than absolute accuracy.
Design director, 25+ years across three manufacturers

Track what changed, and when

Change management, to highlight what changed between models tested weeks apart.
Programme manager, Chinese EV OEM

Propose ideas, not just surfaces

Creative solutions, not just surface changes.
Automotive designer, career across five manufacturers

Interactive, quick, and simple

Make it work interactively and quick, with a very simple UI.
Automotive designer, career across five manufacturers

These were research interviews, not marketing testimonials. Quotes are verbatim and lightly trimmed for length; speakers are described by role rather than named, because a name on a website needs its own separate permission. Not everyone we spoke to was enthusiastic, and the caveats above are theirs, kept in rather than trimmed out.

Entry point

We start narrow, in the discipline we know best.

The long-term platform is multidisciplinary. The first workflow is automotive design and aerodynamics, where our Physics-AI backend already exists. From there we expand across the development process.

Aerodynamics

first backend

Crash

next

Thermal

next

Manufacturability

planned

NVH

planned

Regulations

planned

Available today

While the platform is built, we take on engineering work.

Focused, paid projects where predictive modelling pays for itself inside one development cycle. Same team, same technology, delivered as a service.

How it runs today

Manual variants

Three to five geometries, chosen on intuition.

Meshing and setup

Labour-intensive preparation before anything solves.

Slow simulation

Hours or days per variant.

Physical prototyping

Expensive, and late.

Good enough

If it fails, the loop starts again.

How it runs with Onyx

Data ingestion

Past simulation and test data becomes a trained predictive model.

Instant prediction

Thousands of variations evaluated in minutes.

The true optimum

Selected for weight, thermals, flow or acoustics.

Validation once

High-fidelity simulation to sign off the chosen design.

Faster development

A measurably better product, sooner.

Design space explored

Geometric variations evaluated per R&D sprint.

Illustrative. Traditional CFD limits variations through meshing and compute time; a trained model infers performance across a far larger space.

Time to final design

Time spent iterating before a prototype is built.

Illustrative. The predictive workflow costs an upfront investment in data and training, then removes most of the trial-and-error phase.

Predictive modelling

Trained models that predict performance instantly and optimise geometry for thermals, flow and acoustics.

Data asset engineering

Dormant simulation and test archives turned into datasets that train your own models.

CFD validation

High-fidelity meshing and analysis to validate a final design before tooling.

Integration consulting

Where the return actually is, and a roadmap for putting predictive engineering into your pipeline.

Automotive & aero

Drag reduction, battery thermal management, brake cooling ducts.

HVAC & climate

Fan blade optimisation, acoustic noise, heat exchanger efficiency.

Industrial machinery

Internal flow paths, pressure drop, heavy-duty thermal enclosures.

Marine & renewables

Hull hydrodynamics, propeller design, turbine blade efficiency.

Let's put Onyx in front of a real engineering problem.

Investors, industrial partners and engineering teams reach us at the same address. If you want to see the workflow and the first model, book a slot or write to us.