⚡️ AI can help with PCBs. Just not the hard parts.
Routing? Done. Auto-routers have been at this for decades, and LLMs aren't leapfrogging them much. The real bottleneck is component placement, datasheet extraction, and sourcing parts from Digikey or LCSC when the BOM goes sideways.
Tools like Astra, atopile, and Schematik are chipping away at it. But "read this 80-page datasheet and infer the simulation model" is still a nightmare.
Source
EEBench
Can AI design circuit boards yet?
A look at what current models can build, where they fail, and how EEBench tests the electronics in simulation.
September 4, 2026 526 2
