Knoxville’s VOITAS rebrands to aivato amid AI platform launch
For aivato's founder, there are only two options in the age of AI: lead your field or become irrelevant. He chose to lead with what he calls the world's first AI platform built specifically for automotive EDS engineering.
When VOITAS announced in 2024 that Knoxville would serve as its North American headquarters, the German automotive engineering firm brought stateside expertise in Electrical Distribution Systems (EDS) and automotive wiring system design to major Original Equipment Manufacturing (OEM) customers like Volkswagen and Porsche.
Two years later, the Knoxville headquarters is still going strong. Strong enough, in fact, to make its boldest move yet: now operating as aivato. This transition is largely due to growing AI trends and the need for an “AI layer above engineering systems.”
“Over the last years, we have been deeply involved in EDS development: wiring harnesses, system architectures, real OEM programs,” wrote CEO and Founder Armin Hager. “We kept seeing the same pattern: highly skilled engineers spending time comparing KBL files, validating data consistency, tracing electrical paths, maintaining Excel-based calculations.”
But to aivato and Hager, that’s not engineering. It’s friction. He knew he needed to turn engineering logic into scalable automation, truly integrating with CAD systems, EDS and other workflows across existing environments.
The aivato.app platform launched May 21 to do just that. Here’s what you need to know, from Hager himself.
What sparked this transition?
“I founded the company seven years ago, and we always tried to develop our own tools to be better and faster than our competitors. We always had to compete against what I call ‘best cost countries’ because they are eight dollars per hour cheap. But, I have never heard of a success story in the automotive space where someone went with a best cost provider and it worked out well.
With AI, you can get rid of that repetitive work and ‘best cost’ competitors because you can automate the work. Last year, I decided to put all our tools into one core automated engine. That has become aivato. You can type into a chat ‘move the connector five inches to the right,’ and the CAD software in the background does it automatically through AI-assisted engineering workflows that significantly reduce repetitive manual design effort.
I showed this at an automotive conference, and it blew minds. I had really good meetings with Ford and GM, and they already wanted to work with us. I told them to give me some time to develop it further. Now it’s launched, and I meet with them again next week to show them the full aivato.”
The announcement post mentioned that this transition was a must to stay relevant. What does that mean?
“AI is everywhere now. We knew we had to lean in to stay competitive, but it’s not just about bringing in AI for the sake of it. It needs to be tailored to the industry, and for us, that means reducing engineering friction.
In the past, our industry relied on repetitive comparisons, disconnected formats, Excel-heavy workflows, validation efforts and manual synchronization between systems. Normally, someone uploads a task, someone else downloads it, makes the change, uploads it back, does the documentation and validation, sends it back. With our calculation, aivato lets this be about 30 times faster.
Another main differentiator is that customer engineering data is processed locally on the user side and does not get uploaded into a centralized cloud database. This is huge in the auto industry because OEMs and Tier One contractors are highly sensitive about IP and engineering data security. Our browser solution is really unique. I don’t know any company doing it this way in our space.
Staying relevant also means always iterating. We already have more function ideas to look into. For example, one function is for wiring harness manufacturers. Typically they get a PDF, and engineers sit there manually reading it and creating Excel cutting lists. They will be able to upload that PDF into the chat and extract the cutting lists automatically.“
What does this transition mean for Knoxville?
“We’re already outgrowing our Knoxville space. We have six people working in this office now, but are set to move offices within the same building to accommodate around 15 people. Our team worldwide is about 65 people.
It’s so business-first here. The community is great, and the continued support from the Knoxville Chamber. Plus, the level of talent we’ve been able to hire from UT. I’ve been in other states and in Europe, and I haven’t found that quality.
I made the seed investment myself to launch aivato, but now I want the Knoxville community and beyond to know that we are looking for business investors to continue to iterate. It’s a great chance to invest because the feedback has already been tremendous and we already have ideas for where to go from here. This application can be taken into nuclear energy and other fields, we just need the networking.“
Follow aivato on LinkedIn.
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