Welcome to Issue #004 of Neural Newton
This week, we follow the quiet race to own the simulation stack in China, where cloud-first solvers with AI in the loop are moving from headline to product.
On the shop floor, Figure AI’s funding juggernaut meets the only metric that matters, uptime, and we separate pilot sparkle from 10,000 hour grind. In design land, r/cad finally said the quiet part out loud about repetitive misery, and we map exactly where AI can help without breaking drawings or trust. Toolbench brings Meshy for rapid 3D concepting, plus a couple of practical upgrades that shave hours off tolerance checks and CT analysis. No buzzword salad, just how the bits are starting to boss the atoms.
🏭 The Retrofit: Simulation Sovereignty - China’s Quiet CAE Land Grab
China is sprinting to own the engineering simulation stack, quietly, methodically, and with government tailwinds. Domestic CAE vendors are shipping cloud-first solvers with AI in the loop, while Western incumbents consolidate like it is musical chairs. The strategic aim is obvious: reduce reliance on Western physics solvers the same way Beijing chased chip self-reliance. For engineers, this is not geopolitics, it is a toolchain story. If your solver roadmap relies on a patchwork of decade-old plug-ins, prepare for faster, integrated competitors who can ship updates as fast as your IT can say “change control.” Interesting Engineering overview
On the Western side, consolidation is reshaping who makes your digital stress go away. Cadence agreed to buy Hexagon’s Design & Engineering unit (MSC and friends) for €2.7B, giving Cadence a serious foothold in structural and multibody dynamics, the metal-meets-math zone used by Boeing, BMW, and plenty of Tier-1s. Read the details in Hexagon’s release and Manufacturing Dive.
Meanwhile, Beijing doubled down again on tech self-reliance, a policy umbrella that explicitly includes software stacks for design, simulation, and advanced manufacturing. That sets the table for “good enough” domestic CAE to become “default” at home and competitive abroad. Bloomberg note