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CoLab cashes in on AI demand with $72-million USD funding round. St. John's-based CoLab Software has raised $72 million USD ($101 million CAD) in Series C funding as demand balloons for its artificial intelligence (AI)-powered engineering collaboration tool. The round was led by Intrepid Growth Partners, with participation from returning investors Y Combinator, Pelorus VC, Killick Capital, as well as three-time investor Spider Capital, and Insight Partners, which increased its position with a super pro rata investment. Intrepid co-founder and partner Mark Shulgan is joining CoLab's board as a result of the round. CoLab plans to make several major product and partnership announcements before the end of the year. While the lion's share went to CoLab through roughly $77 million CAD of primary investment, approximately one-third of the round is made up of shares purchased from early investors, according to The Globe and Mail. The round reportedly valued CoLab at around $500 million USD. When reached for comment, CoLab chief marketing officer MJ Smith described the round as "all-equity" and did not disclose its valuation. Co-founded in 2017 by CEO Adam Keating and CTO Jeremy Andrews, CoLab's tool enables multi-user cloud uploads and editing for 2D and 3D computer-aided design files. Engineering teams can submit their designs for review, including feedback and comments. That knowledge is captured by CoLab to be applied throughout a company. "Engineers will only share what they know if the process feels natural and valuable - and that's the breakthrough CoLab has made," Andrews said in a statement. "Without that, expert design knowledge stays locked in people's heads." The tool also captures analytics on the average time taken to complete reviews, address feedback, and respond to common issues in the review process. In March, CoLab announced $5.6 million CAD in financial support through an industry partnership with ExxonMobil to expedite the development of new AI products. The funding supported around 60,000 hours of labour and brought its headcount up to 131, a number that has since increased to 165, according to Smith. The company claims that, since the June launch of its new AI peer checker AutoReview, the product has amassed a waitlist of more than 47,000 engineers. The tool, trained on internal standards and guidelines, annotates drawings and 3D models to identify errors and non-conformances. CoLab said the demand is bolstering its revenue growth. It claims that it's on pace to nearly triple its revenue in 2025. The company counts Ford, Lockheed Martin, GE Appliances, and Schneider Electric among its customers. "We've had executive teams - not just engineering leadership, but CEOs, CFOs, and cross functional leadership - asking us to build their AI strategies with them," Keating said in a statement. "Many are already making seven-figure bets with CoLab." The Globe and Mail reported CoLab has recurring annual revenues somewhere between $15-million and $30-million USD, which Smith did not confirm. CoLab placed 19th on this year's Deloitte Technology Fast 50 list, sporting a 1,730 percent three-year revenue growth rate. The Series C funding will be used to develop new AI agents, build integrations with other engineering and AI applications, expand partnerships, and scale go-to-market teams, CoLab said in a statement. The company added that it plans to make several major product and partnership announcements before the end of the year. CoLab was the first company from Atlantic Canada to be accepted into the Y Combinator accelerator program. Following the accelerator's Demo Day in 2019, it raised a $2.7-million-CAD seed round, followed by a $17-million USD Series A round in October 2021 and a $21 million USD Series B round last year.

CoLab raises $72M in funding to redefine engineering with AI-powered design platform. Engineering is entering a new phase - and it's being rewritten by AI. For years, mechanical and hardware design teams have relied on tedious design reviews, endless meetings, and slow iteration cycles. Now, a St. John's, Canada-based AI startup CoLab is convincing the industry that those days are numbered. Today, CoLab announced it has raised $72 million in Series C funding to push its vision of an AI-powered engineering future. The round was led by Intrepid Growth Partners, with continued backing from Insight Partners, Y Combinator, Pelorus VC, Killick Capital, and Spider Capital. The raise follows the breakout success of AutoReview, CoLab's first AI agent, which has already drawn a waitlist of more than 47,000 engineers eager to use it. The company says AutoReview is just the beginning. Its platform, called EngineeringOS, connects people, design data, and AI to help teams make decisions faster and with greater precision. For customers like Ford, Lockheed Martin, GE Appliances, Johnson Controls, and Schneider Electric, the promise is simple: compress design cycles that once took months into hours and bring products to market years sooner. "Behind every feat of engineering, there's thousands of design decisions. And the most critical decisions in industry still happen slowly - in 20-person meetings, weeks apart," CoLab's co-founder and CEO Adam Keating said in a blog post. "CoLab is changing that. We envision a world where skilled engineers collaborate with AI agents that can access their entire company's collective knowledge, collapsing design cycles from months to hours." From Ford to Lockheed: AI startup CoLab raises $72M to power the AI future of engineering. That vision is quickly gaining traction. According to Keating, some customers are already "making 7-figure bets" on CoLab's AI roadmap. Executive teams are now part of the conversation, not just engineering leads. "Many are already making 7-figure bets with CoLab. It's clear AI isn't just an interesting experiment anymore - it's a competitive advantage in their top-down strategy," Keating adds. The company's new investor, Mark Shulgan, co-founder and partner at Intrepid Growth Partners, calls CoLab the "decision-making layer" that connects human expertise with AI and engineering data. "The company is building the decision-making layer that connects people, data, and AI so teams can apply their expertise faster and more effectively than ever before." CoLab's momentum stems from nearly a decade of groundwork. Since 2017, its platform has helped global engineering teams complete virtual design reviews, storing millions of expert annotations on 2D and 3D files. While traditional software can tell engineers what changed between versions, CoLab's system understands why. This historical context gives its AI agents the ability to suggest design improvements and catch errors that humans might overlook. "Every design decision leaves behind context: the discussions, trade-offs, and rationale that explain why a product is designed a certain way," says Jeremy Andrews, CoLab's co-founder and CTO. "What we've learned is that capturing that knowledge is a user-experience problem. Engineers will only share what they know if the process feels natural and valuable - and that's the breakthrough CoLab has made." That breakthrough couldn't come at a better time. As experienced engineers retire, decades of expertise risk disappearing. The share of manufacturing employees over 55 has more than doubled in the past thirty years, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. "North America and Europe have led the way in advanced design and manufacturing for decades - but the rest of the world is catching up. We risk losing even more ground if we don't capture and scale our engineering knowledge now," says Josh Fredberg, Managing Director at Insight Partners and a former executive at PTC and Ansys. AutoReview, CoLab's first AI peer checker, has already proven the concept. Engineers describe it as "like having a mentor looking over my shoulder," offering guidance and catching design flaws before they become costly mistakes. The company plans to release more AI agents and announce major partnerships over the next year. CoLab's momentum isn't just about automation - it's about preserving human judgment while scaling it with AI. As Keating puts it, "AI can accelerate every tool engineers use, but it can't decide what's right. That's where we come in." With $72 million in fresh capital and a growing list of blue-chip clients, CoLab is positioning itself as the company defining the next era of engineering - one where human expertise and AI work side by side to design the future, faster.

St. John’s may be far from the tech capitals of Toronto, Waterloo, Montreal and Vancouver, but it is home to a thriving local sector