Dr. Maor Farid, Co-Founder & CEO at Leo AI
Guys, the world has changed for good.
Cursor just raised $900M at a $9.9B valuation [1-3].
It’s now making over $500M ARR, growing fast, and being tested by Amazon and praised by Google’s CEO. Cursor is leading the "vibe coding" trend and is one of the hottest AI dev tools today.
How is it relevant for mechanical engineers?
Looking at their success makes us wonder as mechanical engineers — “Look how software engineering changes so fast by leveraging AI. What about product design and mechanical engineering? What is our Cursor — the Cursor of Mechanical Engineering?”
When we started Leo AI in May 2023, we asked ourselves: What is the AI for Mechanical Engineering? How would it look? I mean, we all know that just like AI changed software development, writing legal documents, and creating content for social media — our job as mechanical engineers will change too. But back then (and also today), no one really knows how it will look in 5 years.
When I talked to Bertrand Sicot — the former CEO of SolidWorks and currently the Deputy CEO of Visiativ, one of the world's largest and most renowned SolidWorks distributors — he said: “These days remind me of the early days of SolidWorks, when it was inevitable that the work of MCAD was going to change with the introduction of the PC. I feel the same about AI — the change is inevitable. Super interesting to see what impact it will bring.”
So, to figure out and imagine how our job is going to change, we’ve done this through an experiment: Let’s look at the AI tools that became standard for their professions and find the mechanical equivalent for them.
We drew this table on the whiteboard:
AI for Software Development [Cursor features] | AI for Mechanical Engineering [Leo AI features] |
AI Pair Programmer – Writes, edits, and explains code in real time. | Can make edits on you CAD using a prompt |
Context-Aware Help – Understands your full codebase for smart suggestions. | Connected to your organizational data sources |
Inline Chat – Ask questions directly inside the editor, like “what does this function do?” | Ask questions directly inside the editor, like “what does this part do? Can I replace that with something cheaper/stronger/available in my inventory?” |
Codebase Search – Lightning-fast semantic search across entire projects. | Lightning-fast semantic search across entire projects- both CAD and text files. |
Debug Assistance – Helps diagnose and fix bugs faster. | Inspecting your design, suggesting part/modeling alternatives |
Test Generation – Automatically creates unit tests. |
|
Documentation- creates a clear documentation for the code | Created drawings, and complementary documents for the product. |
It’s like having a senior engineer in your IDE—24/7. | It’s like having a senior engineer in your CAD Tool—24/7. |
The two worlds are not exactly parallel and have inherent differences that stem from the fact that the building blocks of one world are textual (code) and the other physical (physical parts). This makes building (writing code vs. buying/manufacturing parts) and testing (running the code vs. building and running simulations, manufacturing, procurement) much more complex and expensive in the mechanical world.
But still, this was a very useful exercise. Eventually, we built Leo as the first Cursor for mechanical engineering:
AI Design Assistant – Answers technical questions, solves equations, and explains standards in real time.
Context-Aware Support – Understands your design files, folders, specs, CAD context, and PDM data for highly relevant answers.
Inline Q&A – Ask Leo questions directly from your workspace, like “What tolerance should I use here?” or “What’s the right material for this part?”
Engineering Data Search – Instantly search across your organization’s documents, specs, test reports, drawings, and models — even if you didn’t write them.
Design Review Support – Helps catch design flaws early by surfacing relevant rules, constraints, and past mistakes.
Concept Generation – Automatically generates early-stage 3D concepts with descriptions and SoWs for brainstorming or design alternatives.
Part Reuse Acceleration – Finds the right part from your inventory or vendor catalogs based on what it does or how it looks — even from a sketch or photo.
Knowledge Transfer & Ramp-Up – Gives junior engineers the knowledge of your most experienced team members — searchable, accessible, and fast.
With that said — the only ones who can judge if Leo is a game changer are our 45,000+ users — mostly mechanical engineers — and you. We would love to hear from you what you think about Leo, what you love about it, and mainly how we can make it better for you.
Sources:
[1] AI startups revolutionize coding industry, leading to sky-high valuations
[2] Amazon is in talks to roll out AI coding assistant Cursor internally as employee interest spikes
https://www.businessinsider.com/amazon-deploy-cursor-employee-interest-spikes-ai-coding-2025-6
[3] Sundar Pichai is vibe coding. 'It feels so delightful to be a coder.'