The short version: AI is moving into CAD fast, and investors are paying for it. Mach9 closed a $34 million Series A in October 2026 to turn site scans into civil drawings. Backflip, Quilter and Vizcom have each raised $25 million or more. Smaller players like Adam, Leo AI, Camfer and MecAgent are building AI helpers that live inside SOLIDWORKS, Onshape and Fusion. Below are the ten we think engineering teams should watch, what each one actually does, and what it means for the people who hire CAD designers and engineers.
The 10 AI CAD tools at a glance
Funding figures come from company announcements and trade press where available. Where a company has not announced a round itself, we note the figure as reported.
1. Adam: an AI mechanical engineer that works inside your CAD
Adam started as a viral text to 3D app and is now pitching itself as an AI mechanical engineer. According to Adam’s own site, it generates CAD geometry from a plain language description, edits existing models, creates 2D drawings from 3D parts, runs design for manufacturing checks and connects simulation results back to the design. It plugs into Onshape, Fusion, SOLIDWORKS and Siemens NX, plus PLM systems, Slack and Jira, and it pauses for approval before it changes anything.
Funding: Adam came out of Y Combinator’s Winter 2025 batch and raised a $4.1 million seed round led by TQ Ventures, with 468 Capital, Pioneer and Script Capital joining. Cofounders Zach Dive (CEO) and Aaron Li (CPO) both came out of UC Berkeley’s Master of Design program.
Why watch it: Adam is aiming at the dull, repeatable jobs engineers hate, like pushing the same change through a stack of files. There is a free plan, it is SOC 2 Type I, and part of its code is open source, which makes it easy to try.
2. Mach9: AI drafting for civil engineers and surveyors
Mach9 takes 3D scans of roads, utilities and job sites from equipment survey teams already own, then drafts curbs, signs, poles, lane markings and wires automatically. Engineers review and finish the drawing in Mach9’s editor. The company began as a robotics hardware startup and pivoted to AI CAD when its founder decided the real bottleneck was drafting, not hardware.
Funding: Mach9 announced a $34 million Series A on October 21, 2026, co led by First Round Capital and Bessemer Venture Partners. That brings total funding to about $49 million.
Why watch it: Nearly 100 customers have used the private beta on more than 2,500 projects. It is the biggest fresh AI CAD round on this list and it targets civil work, where drafting backlogs are real.
3. Leo AI: an engineering brain trained on standards and your PDM
Leo AI is built for mechanical engineers. It runs on what the company calls a Large Mechanical Model, trained on engineering books, standards and handbooks, and it can read a company’s PDM and look at SOLIDWORKS models to answer design questions, suggest parts and speed up decisions.
Funding: Leo closed a $5 million seed round led by Flint Capital, bringing total funding to $9.7 million. Founders Maor Farid and Moti Moravia are both mechanical engineers.
Why watch it: The company says more than 20,000 engineers have used it, and former SOLIDWORKS CEO Bertrand Sicot is a public fan. It is less about drawing parts and more about giving engineers fast, sourced answers.
4. Backflip: scan a broken part, get an editable CAD model
Backflip was founded by the team behind Markforged. Its headline tool turns a 3D scan of a part into a parametric CAD file in about a minute, which matters on plant floors where the original drawings are long gone. A SOLIDWORKS plugin rebuilds the part with a native feature history, so a designer can edit it like any other model.
Funding: Backflip came out of stealth with a $30 million round co led by NEA and Andreessen Horowitz. The company says its model was trained on a synthetic dataset of more than 100 million 3D shapes.
Why watch it: Reverse engineering is slow, skilled work, and maintenance teams need it constantly. Backflip is one of the best funded tools aimed squarely at it.
5. Zoo: a whole CAD platform built around AI
Zoo, formerly KittyCAD, did not bolt AI onto someone else’s CAD. It built its own geometry engine and launched Zoo Design Studio in May 2025. Users can switch between point and click modeling, writing models as code in its KCL language, and generating parts from text prompts. It also has a design agent called Zookeeper and APIs for developers.
Funding: Zoo is venture backed, with about $6 million raised as reported. There is a free plan, and paid tiers started at $99 a month at launch.
Why watch it: Zoo was one of the first text to CAD products and is the most ambitious attempt to replace the CAD tool itself rather than sit inside it.
6. Camfer: talk to SOLIDWORKS in plain English
Camfer, from Y Combinator’s Summer 2024 batch, describes itself as an applied research lab building toward an AI mechanical engineer. Its tool lets SOLIDWORKS users create and edit parametric parts with natural language, use text plus images as input, and query the feature tree without leaving the CAD window.
Funding: Camfer is seed stage, with about $9.6 million in total funding reported. On its YC jobs page, the team says it won both YC’s internal demo day and OpenAI’s o1 hackathon.
Why watch it: SOLIDWORKS has a huge installed base, and a copilot that works where those users already are has an easy path in.
7. MecAgent: a copilot that also checks the rules
MecAgent builds CAD models from text prompts or sketches and checks designs against industry standards. It integrates with leading CAD platforms including SOLIDWORKS and CATIA, which puts it in front of automotive and aerospace teams.
Funding: MecAgent raised a $3 million seed in May 2025 from investors including Kima Ventures, Outlander VC and Hugging Face cofounder Thomas Wolf.
Why watch it: Standards checking is where AI can save an engineer from an expensive mistake, not just save time on modeling.
8. Quilter: AI that lays out circuit boards on its own
Quilter is ECAD rather than mechanical CAD, but it belongs on any AI design list. Founded by former SpaceX engineer Sergiy Nesterenko, it uses reinforcement learning grounded in physics, like electromagnetics, heat and signal timing, to lay out printed circuit boards automatically, turning weeks of layout work into minutes.
Funding: Quilter raised a $25 million Series B led by Index Ventures in October 2025, bringing total funding to $40 million, with Benchmark and Coatue also on the cap table.
Why watch it: Board layout sits on the critical path of almost every hardware product. Aerospace, defense and consumer electronics companies are already using it.
9. Vizcom: from sketch to render to 3D for product designers
Vizcom started with industrial designers who sketch by hand. Its platform turns a sketch into a photorealistic render in seconds, explores variations, and is moving toward 3D. Ford and New Balance were early customers, and the company was founded by Jordan Taylor, a former industrial designer at Honda and NVIDIA.
Funding: After a $20 million Series A led by Index Ventures, Vizcom raised a $27 million Series B led by Radical Ventures. The company says it serves more than 700,000 designers.
Why watch it: Vizcom sits at the front of the design process, before engineering CAD, and its user base is far larger than most tools here.
10. Limitless Labs: AI for the CAM side of CAD/CAM
Limitless Labs, formerly LimitlessCNC, is based in Tel Aviv and targets the step after design: programming CNC machines. Its AI works inside CAD/CAM systems to cut the time skilled programmers spend turning a model into toolpaths for precision parts.
Funding: The company announced a $20 million Series A in August 2026.
Why watch it: CNC programmers are scarce in most manufacturing markets. Tools that stretch each programmer further will get attention from every shop owner.
Two more names on our radar
- Dream came out of stealth in October 2026 with a $17 million seed from a16z to build AI models that design and engineer buildings, including routing HVAC.
- Navier raised a $5.6 million seed to build autonomous engineering agents for hardware teams.
How did we pick these AI CAD tools?
We looked for companies that are building AI for real engineering design work, not hobby 3D meshes, and that have outside funding behind them. Each tool on the list either works inside the CAD software engineers already use, replaces a slow manual step like drafting, reverse engineering or board layout, or both. This is a watch list, not a ranking of which product is best for your team, and none of these companies paid to be included.
Will AI CAD tools replace CAD designers?
Not on the evidence so far. Every company here keeps an engineer in the loop: Adam pauses for approval, Mach9 hands drawings back for review, Backflip produces a model a designer then edits. What changes is the job mix. Less time goes to redrawing, repeating edits and reading manuals, and more goes to checking output, owning standards and making design calls. We covered the same question in is AI taking over CAD jobs and generative design and designers.
What it means for hiring
AI CAD tools make drafting faster, which raises the value of people who can judge whether the output is right.
- Designers who know GD&T, materials and manufacturing will review AI output faster and catch more of its mistakes.
- Teams that write clear design standards get more from tools like MecAgent and Leo AI, because the AI checks against those rules.
- Civil drafting backlogs, reverse engineering and CNC programming are the first jobs being reshaped. Expect demand for people who can run and verify these tools.
Hiring? See our CAD and drafting recruiters, mechanical engineering recruiters and civil engineering recruiters, or check current pay on the CAD designer salary page.
Frequently asked questions
What is an AI CAD tool?
It is software that uses AI to create, edit or check engineering designs. Some generate parts from a text description, some convert scans into editable models, and some answer design questions using your own files and standards.
What is Adam (adam.new)?
Adam is a Y Combinator backed AI agent that builds and edits CAD models, makes drawings and runs manufacturability checks inside Onshape, Fusion, SOLIDWORKS and Siemens NX. It raised a $4.1 million seed round in October 2025 and offers a free plan.
Can AI generate a SOLIDWORKS model from text?
Yes. Camfer, MecAgent and Adam all generate or edit parametric parts in SOLIDWORKS from plain language, and Backflip rebuilds scanned parts with a native feature history. An engineer still needs to check the result.
Which AI CAD startup has raised the most?
On this list, Mach9 has the most at about $49 million after its October 2026 Series A, followed by Vizcom, Quilter and Backflip.
Should CAD designers learn AI tools now?
It is worth trying the free plans. Employers will value designers who can use these tools and, more importantly, spot when the output is wrong. See what to learn besides CAD.
More stories like this are on our AI for Engineers hub.
