AI is everywhere in the headlines right now, but is it actually doing anything positive for engineers? Or is it just going to take jobs and produce less competent engineers by putting everything on autopilot? I sat down with Tobias Pohl, Co-Founder and CEO of CELUS, and Matt Bromley, VP of Product Strategy for Siemens EDA, to try to get past the hype and talk honestly about what agentic AI is actually changing, from early concept and ideation all the way through the PCB design process, and just as importantly, what it's not changing.
CELUS and Siemens EDA have partnered to bridge that early, "fuzzy" stage of concept design into the traditional schematic, layout, and manufacturing flow. Toby and Matt talk about how agentic AI is compressing the design flow, from comparing datasheets and selecting components to running simulations, while the architecture and the judgment calls stay firmly with the engineer. They also talk about how agentic AI is now working across toolsets. Engineers can ask a question in one platform and have it orchestrated across another, without all the manual handoffs, file conversions, and integration work that used to eat up so much time and introduce design risks.
00:00 — Introductions Toby and Matt introduce themselves and how the CELUS/Siemens EDA partnership came together.
01:17 — Why CELUS and Siemens EDA partnered The gap between early concept design and traditional engineering tool chains, and how the two platforms connect ideation to schematic, layout, and manufacturing.
04:20 — The real bottlenecks in modern design Why comparing datasheets and chip selection can eat weeks of engineering time, and how a non-linear design process creates constant rework.
07:59 — Where AI is already delivering real value Extracting models and data from datasheets, evaluating BOM choices against manufacturability and lead time, and using AI to interpret simulation results.
11:35 — Inside agentic architecture Toby explains the shift from single LLM assistants to full agentic systems, including guardrail agents, review agents, and orchestration across multiple tools, including agents that hand off work between CELUS and Siemens EDA without the engineer manually reconnecting the two.
17:54 — Does the engineer stay in control? I push Toby and Matt directly on whether AI is encroaching on architecture and design judgment. The answer is still no, and they explain why.
19:39 — Walking the design journey, start to finish Toby and Matt trace a real workflow: describing design intent in natural language, generating an initial architecture, comparing multiple approaches, and handing off an electrically correct design into Siemens EDA tools for simulation, layout, and DFM.
28:19 — Who holds the judgment Why the designer still drives architecture and intent, and how agentic tools add robustness rather than replace decision-making.
35:00 — The hard question about jobs I ask the question our listeners won't forgive me for skipping: didn't software engineers lose jobs when AI hit? Toby and Matt respond with the historical parallel to compilers, high-level languages, and past technology hype cycles.
40:46 — What's next Toby and Matt preview upcoming agentic capabilities across both platforms and how you can start exploring the tools yourself.
Key takeaway
The engineer remains the design intent and architecture. Agentic AI is built to take the manual grind out of design, the spreadsheets, the datasheet comparisons, the repetitive tool-switching, so engineers can spend more of their time on the judgment calls, the creativity, and the innovation that only they can bring.
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