CoLab has raised $72 million in Series C financing as the company expands its role in applying AI to complex engineering and hardware development. The round was led by Intrepid Growth Partners, with participation from existing investors, including Insight Partners, which increased its stake through a super-pro rata investment, along with Y Combinator, Pelorus VC, Killick Capital, and Spider Capital. This marks the third consecutive round in which these investors have backed the company, reflecting continued confidence in CoLab’s momentum and market position.
The new funding follows the launch of AutoReview, CoLab’s first AI agent designed to assist engineers in reviewing technical models and drawings. Since launching in June, AutoReview has attracted over 47,000 engineers to its waitlist, driving significant revenue acceleration. CoLab expects to nearly triple revenue in 2025.
CoLab’s platform, known as EngineeringOS, is utilized by major manufacturers and hardware innovators developing next-generation technologies. Customers include Ford, Lockheed Martin, GE Appliances, Johnson Controls, Schneider Electric, and others who use CoLab to coordinate design reviews, analyze engineering data, and collaborate with suppliers. The company’s software enables distributed teams to evaluate and refine designs at scale, thereby compressing the time required to transition from concept to final specifications.
Engineering design decisions often require navigating complex tradeoffs involving performance, cost, manufacturability, and safety. While new forms of AI can generate designs and run simulations faster, final decisions still depend heavily on human judgment. CoLab aims to bridge that gap between rapidly advancing software tools and the expert intuition of engineers.
Over the course of eight years, CoLab users have created millions of expert annotations on engineering files. This accumulated knowledge provides context on why designs were made a certain way, which CoLab says is critical for training AI agents that can enhance design reviews and help prevent errors that might otherwise be missed. The company also highlights the emergence of a growing knowledge gap, as many experienced engineers in advanced manufacturing industries in North America and Europe approach retirement.
The adoption of AutoReview among early customers has been strong, with engineers describing the tool as similar to having an experienced mentor assist their work. In addition to demand from engineering teams, executive leaders have begun involving CoLab in broader AI planning, with some organizations already committing seven-figure budgets to the company’s workflow transformation initiatives.
The Series C funding will support the development of new AI agents, deeper product integrations with engineering and AI software, expanded partnerships, and additional commercial hiring. CoLab plans to share further product and partner updates before the end of the year.
KEY QUOTES:
“Even with faster tools, engineering still depends on human judgment — the knowledge, intuition, and trade-offs captured in design reviews. That’s where CoLab comes in. 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.”
Mark Shulgan, Co-founder and Partner at Intrepid Growth Partners
“Every design decision leaves behind context: the discussions, tradeoffs, and rationale that explain why a product is designed a certain way. What we’ve learned is 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. Without that, expert design knowledge stays locked in people’s heads.”
Jeremy Andrews, Co-founder and CTO
“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. CoLab has figured out how to do that in a way that few software companies have, and that’s about to become even more powerful with AI.”
Josh Fredberg, Managing Director at Insight Partners
“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 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.”
“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. Many are already making 7-figure bets with CoLab. It’s clear AI isn’t just an interesting experiment any more – it’s a competitive advantage in their top-down strategy.”
Adam Keating, Co-Founder and CEO
