New Tool Automates Firmware for ESP32 and STM32
CraftifAI has launched its Orbit platform, featuring a tool called FormGen that automates embedded software development. The company claims the tool can reduce firmware development effort on microcontrollers like the ESP32 and STM32 by up to 80% and is working towards hardware-agnostic code generation.
- The Bengaluru-based startup CraftifAI recently secured $3 million in a seed funding round led by Ankur Capital, with participation from IvyCap Ventures, Capital-A, and Antler. This funding is intended to expand its engineering and go-to-market teams for its global expansion into the embedded, edge, and IoT markets. - The company was founded in 2025 by Pratik Sharda, who previously led product development for PhonePe's payment devices, and Yashwant Dagar, a former system design engineer at Xilinx-AMD and Sima.ai. Their stated mission is to address long-standing inefficiencies in the embedded software industry, such as manual driver development and hardware vendor lock-in. - CraftifAI's Orbit platform is described as a "multi-agent GenAI-powered platform" that automates various stages of embedded product development. It utilizes specialized "agents" that are designed to reason, plan, and execute complex tasks such as generating and porting firmware. - The "FormGen" tool is a specific component of the Orbit platform focused on the agentic generation of firmware for IoT devices and microcontrollers. The initial phase of FormGen supports the ESP32 and STM32 microcontrollers. - The overarching goal for FormGen and the Orbit platform is to be "silicon-agnostic," meaning the generated code is not tied to a specific hardware vendor. This approach aims to allow developers to switch between different chipsets without needing to rewrite the entire software stack. - CraftifAI is positioning its platform to address a significant talent bottleneck in the embedded systems industry, which has an estimated 2.5 million engineers globally, a number that has not kept pace with the projected growth of connected smart devices to over 41 billion by 2030. - The company has already initiated pilot programs with several Indian Original Equipment Manufacturers (OEMs) in sectors such as robotics, drones, IoT, and AI cameras. Additionally, they are engaged in a pilot with a publicly listed semiconductor company in the United States. - Traditional firmware development for these microcontrollers typically involves using tools like the ESP-IDF (Espressif IoT Development Framework) for ESP32 and STM32CubeIDE/STM32CubeMX for STM32, which require more manual coding and configuration. Low-code platforms, like CraftifAI's offering, aim to reduce this manual effort and speed up the development process.
