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Skema.ai Closes Strategic Funding Round Backed by AEC Industry Leaders, Venture Investors, and Family Offices

PRESS RELEASE — Skema, creator of a next-generation design platform for architecture, engineering, and construction professionals, announced the successful closing of a strategic seed funding round. The capital will expand Skema’s platform capabilities, deepen integrations with AEC workflows, and extend its tools across the full spectrum of design and construction phases.

The round was led by Robin Bienfait, board member of Skema and CEO of both Atlanta Tech Park and Emnovate. The investor base spans three distinct categories, reflecting breadth of confidence in Skema’s mission: strategic industry partners, ventures investors, and family offices.

Strategic investors — firms that are both backers and active participants in the built environment — include Bear Label Consulting Engineers, Dar Ventures, Eastern Companies, Frischhertz Electric, Marnell Group, Newcomb & Boyd, SHoP Architects, STO Building Group, Syska Hennessy, Thornton Tomasetti, TLC Engineering, and Winter Construction. Venture and angel capital was provided by AEC Angels and Dar Ventures. Threadneedle Family Office participated as a key investor.

“This investment reflects not just capital but a shared belief in Skema’s potential to transform how design data is created and reused across the built environment,” said Bienfait. “The depth of participation from firms that live inside these workflows every day signals something real — and something worth backing.”

“We’re grateful for the confidence from this extraordinary group of backers,” said Charlie Cichetti, CEO of Skema. “Their investment validates our mission to make rich, interoperable design data accessible earlier in the project lifecycle through a data intelligence layer — helping teams deliver better outcomes faster. This funding empowers us to further accelerate our roadmap and deepen value for our customers.”

Skema’s latest funding marks an inflection point in the company’s evolution from a generative design solution to core infrastructure for interoperable project delivery.

In 2023, Skema acquired intellectual property and a dedicated development team from Kreo Limited, integrating complementary AI/machine learning technology and talent to strengthen its AEC offerings and broaden its customer base. As adoption grew, customers required deeper integration across production environments — including bi-directional synchronization with Revit and API access within computational tools such as Grasshopper.
Enabling two-way updates introduced version control across connected systems. Supporting multiple authoring environments led to model federation and the development of Skema’s analytic model — a spatial system of record that aligns models and versions within a unified project context.

The result is a platform architecture powered by APIs that preserves design intent across systems, reduces translation loss, and supports continuous coordination from early concept through BIM deliverables.

The capital enables expansion of these platform capabilities, deepens ecosystem integrations, and supports growing demand for more reliable, data-rich project infrastructure across the AEC industry.

Investor Quotes

“We’ve spent years working around the data problem Skema is solving. Every project carries the cost of rebuilding information that should have traveled forward from the last one. We invested because we believe the teams who get structured data right earlier in the design process will outperform the ones who don’t.” — Grant McCullagh, Managing Director, AEC Angels

“Family offices invest differently than funds. We don’t have a harvest date — we have a thesis. Ours is that the firms building the infrastructure layer of the built environment will quietly become indispensable, and Skema is building exactly that. The AEC industry has tolerated data loss between project phases for so long that most practitioners have stopped seeing it as a problem. Skema sees it clearly. Threadneedle is glad to be in early and intends to stay in.” — Trey Taylor, Managing Director, Threadneedle Family Office

About Skema.ai

Skema, Inc. provides the generative data intelligence & infrastructure layer for the Architecture, Engineering, and Construction (AEC) industry. By establishing a unified system of record across design and BIM workflows, Skema replaces fragmented processes with continuous, structured building intelligence. Through open APIs, bi-directional interoperability, version control, model federation, and its analytic spatial model, Skema fast forwards firms to generate coordinated, engineering-aware BIM directly from schematic design while preserving firm knowledge across projects. The result is greater precision, continuity, and trust in project data shared among architects, contractors, suppliers, and owners.

Jacky Olivares
Skema
+1 770–742–8918
email us here
Visit us on social media:
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SOURCE

James Dargan
About the author
James Dargan

James Dargan is a writer and researcher at The AI Insider. His focus is on the AI startup ecosystem and he writes articles on the space that have a tone accessible to the average reader.

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