Insider Brief
- Mach9, the AI CAD software company for civil engineering, has raised a $34 million Series A co-led by First Round Capital and Bessemer Venture Partners, with participation from Prudence and Quiet Capital, bringing total funding to $49 million as the U.S. faces a growing need to rebuild aging infrastructure.
- The San Francisco company turns LiDAR and other 3D scans into engineering drawings up to 10 times faster at one-fifth the cost, automatically drafting features such as curbs, poles and wires with centimeter-level accuracy, and has been used on more than 2,500 projects across all 50 states by customers including WSP, HNTB and Caltrans.
- Co-founder and CEO Alex Baikovitz, who launched the company with fellow Carnegie Mellon Robotics Institute alumni, said Mach9 aims to expand capacity to build and maintain critical infrastructure, with the funding set to grow its AI software for surveying and civil engineering amid a 24% drop in resident surveying licenses since 2011.
PRESS RELEASE — Mach9, the AI CAD software for civil engineering, announced a $34 million Series A co-led by First Round Capital and Bessemer Venture Partners, with participation from Prudence and continued participation from Quiet Capital. The new financing brings Mach9’s total funding to $49 million. The company will use the capital to expand its AI software for surveying and civil engineering as America faces a growing need to rebuild and maintain aging infrastructure.
Much of America’s infrastructure was built in a single generation, designed to last 50 years. That was 70 years ago. Today, roads, utility poles and power lines across the country are reaching the end of their intended lives. In response, the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act allocated $1.2 trillion to rebuild and repair these critical systems. But before engineers can build what’s next, they need an accurate blueprint of what’s already there.
Creating that initial blueprint is the job of survey teams, and it’s one of the first bottlenecks in nearly every infrastructure project. Advances in LiDAR mean teams can scan miles of roadway in a day, but turning those scans into engineering drawings remains manual and can take weeks or months. And there are fewer people to do the work, with resident surveying licenses down 24% between 2011 and 2025.
Mach9 is AI CAD software for civil engineering that turns reality capture data into digital blueprints up to 10x faster at one-fifth the cost. Civil engineering and surveying teams upload 3D scans of roads, utilities and construction sites collected with the equipment they already use. Mach9 then automatically drafts physical features like curbs, signs, poles, lane markings and wires with centimeter-level accuracy. Surveyors and engineers review, refine and finalize the drawings using Mach9’s editing tools.
“We need to rebuild aging roads and utilities while expanding the power, transportation and communications networks people will rely on for decades to come,” said Alex Baikovitz, co-founder and CEO of Mach9. “We’re expanding the world’s capacity to build and maintain the infrastructure that people depend on.”
Mach9 was founded by Baikovitz, Haowen Shi, Michael Mong and Zach Sussman after meeting at Carnegie Mellon University’s Robotics Institute. They previously worked on systems that perceive and navigate the physical world at Tesla, SpaceX, Apple, NASA and Google X.
Engineering teams have now used Mach9 across more than 2,500 projects in all 50 states, surveying over 100,000 miles of infrastructure corridors — enough to cross the continental United States roughly 35 times. Its customers include civil engineering firms WSP, HNTB and NV5 and transportation agencies such as Caltrans, Minnesota DOT and the Maryland State Highway Administration.
On Interstate 8 in San Diego, Caltrans is using Mach9 to inventory rumble strips and other road-safety features, helping engineers identify gaps and plan improvements. In San Francisco, Kier + Wright is using Mach9 to increase pedestrian safety around schools. In Louisiana, Fibersmith is using Mach9 to help connect 125,000 homes and businesses that lacked high-speed internet.
“There are 4.2 million miles of public roads in the U.S. alone, before you count the power lines, fiber networks, railways and other infrastructure we rely on every day,” said Bill Trenchard, Partner at First Round Capital. “Mach9 is building the software layer that will turn our physical world into information engineers can understand and act on. It will become a foundational tool for how our country’s infrastructure gets built and maintained.”
“AI is creating the opportunity for a new generation of CAD software. Just as software transformed construction, AI CAD will transform how infrastructure is surveyed, designed, built and operated. Mach9 can become the platform that brings civil engineering into the AI era,” said Caty Rea, Vice President at Bessemer Venture Partners. Rea led Bessemer’s investment in Mach9 with Brian Feinstein, who previously led the firm’s investment in Procore, one of the biggest successes in the architecture, engineering, and construction market over the past decade.
“Demand for infrastructure work keeps growing, but experienced engineering and surveying talent is finite,” said Rob Ashley, HDLS Technology Director at Pennoni. “Mach9 enables us to do 50% more work with the same experienced team. That means we can take on projects we otherwise wouldn’t have the capacity to deliver.”
About Mach9
Mach9 is the AI CAD platform for civil engineering, built to expand the world’s capacity to build and maintain critical infrastructure. Its software turns 3D scans into engineering-ready CAD drawings, helping teams work up to 10x faster and at one-fifth the cost. Mach9 has been used across more than 2,500 projects in all 50 states, surveying over 100,000 miles of infrastructure. Founded by engineers from Carnegie Mellon’s Robotics Institute who built systems for the physical world at Tesla, SpaceX, Apple, NASA and Google X, Mach9 is headquartered in San Francisco. Learn more at mach9.ai.
David Huang, Mach9, [email protected]
