Secondmind and SCAE sign reseller deal to bring engineering AI to Japan
Secondmind, the Cambridge-based engineering AI specialist, has closed a value-added reseller (VAR) agreement with SC Automotive Engineering Co., Ltd. (SCAE), a wholly-owned subsidiary of Sumitomo Corporation. Under the deal, SCAE will bundle Secondmind's cloud-native model-based engineering software into its consulting and development services for Japanese original equipment manufacturers and Tier 1 suppliers. The partnership is notably SCAE's first with a technology company based outside Japan.
The agreement is structured around two Secondmind product lines: Design Space Exploration, which the company says can reduce the number of simulations required during vehicle design by up to 80%, and a Calibration tool that is claimed to cut the time needed to calibrate electric motors, engines and other powertrain systems by more than 50%. Secondmind cites a deployment at Mazda Motor Corporation as evidence of the latter, where the automaker reported a 59% reduction in engineering hours compared to conventional methods — a figure that will carry weight in conversations with other Japanese OEMs.
What the technology does
Both products are built on what Secondmind calls Active Learning: a Bayesian machine-learning approach that identifies the most informative experiments or simulations to run next, rather than exhaustively sweeping parameter spaces. The practical effect, the company says, is that engineers can converge on feasible designs or calibrated performance targets with significantly less physical test data. An unnamed engine manufacturer cited in the release reportedly found three times as many viable designs in half the time using the platform.
SCAE president and chief executive Toshimi Yamanoi said the deal "opens an exciting new chapter" for the company and described Secondmind's results as validation that its technology "will change the way Japanese automakers design and test products". Secondmind CEO Gary Brotman framed the deal as opening access to a market where engineering rigour and quality expectations are particularly demanding.
Market context and competitive landscape
The automotive engineering-AI category has attracted considerable investment as the industry grapples with the simultaneous complexity of electrification, software-defined vehicle architectures, and the proliferation of CASE — connected, autonomous, shared and electric — programmes. Traditional simulation vendors such as Ansys, Siemens and Altair offer broad multi-physics toolchains, while a growing cohort of AI-native firms — including Monolith AI, ESTECO and several university spin-outs — are targeting the design-optimisation and test-reduction opportunity from different angles. Secondmind's differentiation rests on its Gaussian-process-based Active Learning core, which is oriented toward data-scarce, high-cost physical testing environments, a characterisation that fits powertrain calibration particularly well.
The Japan market presents a distinctive commercial challenge: OEM procurement cycles are long, supplier relationships are sticky, and incumbent consulting firms have deep institutional trust. SCAE's lineage as a Sumitomo Corporation subsidiary gives it credibility and network access that a foreign software vendor would struggle to build independently, making the VAR structure a logical entry mechanism for Secondmind rather than a direct-sales expansion.
Regulatory and standards read-across
Secondmind's software operates within the model-based development workflows that underpin ISO 26262 functional safety and AUTOSAR-compliant design processes. As Japan's OEMs face pressure to shorten type-approval timelines under evolving UN Regulation No. 155 cybersecurity and software-update requirements, tools that reduce iteration cycles without compromising traceability will increasingly need to demonstrate audit-friendly documentation. Neither party addressed certification compatibility in the announcement, which is a gap that enterprise buyers are likely to probe during evaluation.
Secondmind has previously been named in Barclays Eagle Labs' AI:100 list and selected for the Tech Nation Future Fifty programme. The company has not disclosed the financial terms of the SCAE agreement.