Three Howard University Engineers Launch Trace to Automate PCB Design Workflows

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Trace, an AI software company automating the printed circuit board (PCB) design workflow, has launched out of stealth and is now accepting customers worldwide.

Founded by Howard University engineers Ayomide Adekoya, Jeff Allo, and Olu Afolabi, who bring experience from Apple, Meta, and NVIDIA, Trace addresses one of the most time-consuming and error-prone stages of hardware development: PCB design, where manual workflows and repeated iterations have slowed product development cycles for decades.

PCBWay, one of the world’s leading PCB manufacturers, partnered with Trace after seeing adoption spread through hardware engineering communities. Pikkolo Assembly, a Denver-based fabrication company, is also live as Trace’s first U.S. manufacturing partner.

Trace automates PCB design through natural language prompts, handling schematic generation, component selection, layout, and routing, while integrating directly with manufacturing partners for production. A proprietary AI-native file format reduces manual iteration cycles that have historically slowed hardware development.

At 20, Adekoya leads as Co-founder and CEO, having left a role in big tech to build Trace alongside his Howard classmates.

"We walked away from some of the most coveted jobs in tech because we believed in something nobody else could see yet," said Adekoya. "Hardware engineers spend weeks on the most tedious parts of design when they should be solving the hard problems. We built Trace to give them back their time and let them focus on innovation itself."

The launch comes as the global PCB supply chain undergoes major restructuring and hardware companies face growing pressure to move faster from design to manufacturing. As robotics, autonomous systems, and physical AI expand rapidly, demand for faster hardware development workflows has climbed sharply.

For hardware engineers, the design platform often determines the downstream manufacturing path, from component selection to fabrication. Through direct integrations with manufacturing partners, Trace helps teams move more efficiently from design to production.

Trace's early customers report cutting design cycles from 12 weeks to 2 weeks, while reducing manufacturing errors that previously required expensive board respins.

Trace is available now for teams ranging from solo engineers to robotics companies, defense contractors, and OEMs. A free Ask mode is open to anyone, with paid plans starting at $29.99 per month. Discover how Trace automates PCB design from concept to manufacturing in weeks.