cad
(7)
Bentley Systems
Five brothers, one CAD engine, and four decades later the software running underneath much of the world's roads, rail, and water networks - now being rebuilt around digital twins and infrastructure AI.
Aurorin CAD
Aurorin CAD is building professional mechanical design software from scratch, replacing the 1980s-era geometry kernels inside tools like SolidWorks with a purpose-built, AI-native B-Rep kernel. The result: parts that take an experienced SolidWorks user 20 minutes to model can be created in seconds, either through a fast modern interface or by describing them in natural language to an integrated AI agent. Founded in the Y Combinator Winter 2026 batch by Michael Baron, a former 3x SpaceX intern and Apple GPU driver engineer, Aurorin positions itself as 'Claude Code for mechanical engineers.'
Autodesk
Autodesk is a design and make software company whose tools power the buildings, products, movies, and infrastructure of the physical world. Best known for AutoCAD, the company now spans architecture, engineering and construction (Revit, Civil 3D, Forma), product design and manufacturing (Fusion, Inventor), and media and entertainment (Maya, 3ds Max, Arnold). With roughly $6 billion in fiscal 2025 revenue and a near-fully subscription business, Autodesk's stated mission is to empower everyone, everywhere to design and make anything - increasingly with cloud platforms and AI woven into the workflow.
Leo AI
Leo AI is a Cambridge, Massachusetts company building what it calls the world's first AI purpose-built for mechanical engineering. Its engineering design co-pilot, powered by a proprietary Large Mechanical Model (LMM) trained on millions of real-world products and engineering standards, turns text, sketches and specifications into production-ready 3D CAD models. Leo integrates with CAD and PDM systems to answer technical questions, source parts, run mechanical calculations and generate design concepts, and says it helps teams cut engineering time by up to 70%.
Physna
Physna is a geometric deep-learning company that does for 3D models and physical objects what Google did for text: it lets machines actually understand shape. Its proprietary technology codifies the geometry of any 3D model into searchable, comparable data, powering both an enterprise platform used by Fortune 500 manufacturers and government agencies, and Thangs, a free public 3D search engine and creator community that has grown to tens of millions of monthly users. Founded in 2015 in Ohio and backed by Sequoia, Tiger Global, GV and Drive Capital with more than $86M raised, Physna turns the physical world into something a computer can search, match and protect.
Backflip AI
Backflip AI is a San Francisco-based generative AI company building 3D design tools for the physical world. Founded by the Markforged co-founders Greg Mark and David Benhaim, it turns text prompts, sketches and photos into editable 3D meshes (Idea to Mesh) and converts 3D scan data into fully parametric CAD models in one click (Scan-to-CAD / Mesh-to-CAD), with native Onshape and SOLIDWORKS integration. The company raised a $30M Series A co-led by NEA and Andreessen Horowitz and trained its model on a synthetic dataset of over 100 million 3D geometries.
Flux
Flux is a browser-based, AI-native hardware design platform that turns text prompts into manufacturable printed circuit boards. The San Francisco company calls its product an 'AI Hardware Engineer' and is rewriting how electronics get designed by combining an electronic CAD environment with an agentic copilot that researches parts, draws schematics, lays out boards, and prepares files for fabrication.