London, June 30th, 2026 — ToffeeX today announced that James Scapa and Stephanie Buckner have joined as investors and advisors through Escape Investment Management, the firm they co-founded following Altair‘s acquisition by Siemens.
James Scapa founded Altair Engineering in 1985, leaving a career in automotive engineering consulting to start what became one of the most influential companies in the history of simulation software. Over four decades as Chairman and CEO, he built Altair from a three-person consultancy into a global leader in computational science with over 16,000 customers, more than 3,000 employees, and offices across 28 countries. He took the company public on Nasdaq in 2017 and guided it through its acquisition by Siemens in March 2025 — a transaction valued at nearly $10 billion. Following the close of the deal, James co-founded Escape Investment Management to back the next generation of deep technology companies.
Stephanie Buckner served as Chief Operating Officer of Altair from 2022 through the Siemens acquisition, leading corporate development, global field operations, sales, and technical support worldwide. Earlier in her tenure at Altair, she held senior roles in strategic alliances and corporate development, building the partner ecosystem that underpinned much of the company’s commercial growth. She was recognised among the Top 50 Women Chief Operating Officers of 2024 and the Top 25 AI Executives of 2024, and co-founded Escape Investment Management alongside James to continue investing at the frontier of technology innovation.
Marco Pietropaoli, Founder and CEO of ToffeeX, said: “Having James and Stephanie back ToffeeX through Escape is a defining moment for us. James built Altair over forty years into one of the category-defining businesses in engineering software. Stephanie helped shape the commercial and operational engine that made that scale possible. Their confidence in what we are building, and their willingness to bring both capital and expertise to the table, tells us everything about where this is heading.”
About ToffeeX
ToffeeX is a physics-driven generative design platform purpose-built for thermal management and complex engineering optimization. ToffeeX empowers engineering teams to explore design possibilities faster, validate thermal performance confidently, and bring innovations to market with reduced time and cost. The world’s leading engineering organizations use ToffeeX to design the future of thermal management solutions.