# Vardhan Mehta

> Vardhan Mehta is the co-founder and CEO of Acelab, the company behind Material Hub, an AI platform that helps architects discover, evaluate, and specify building products. A former architect who worked on U.S. embassy envelopes and projects at MIT and Yale, he traded the drafting table for a database after watching designers burn hours hunting through PDFs and spec sheets. Acelab now serves more than 20,000 architecture and design firms in North America, raised a $13.5M Series A in October 2025 led by Navitas Capital, and landed Mehta on Forbes 30 Under 30. His bet: AI can finally absorb the complexity of every material decision in the built environment.

- **Role:** Co-founder & CEO at Acelab (Material Hub)
- **Organizations:** Acelab, WEISS/MANFREDI, limonLAB, Harvard Innovation Labs
- **From:** Central India
- **Nationality:** Indian
- **Education:** Master of Architecture in Urban Design (MAUD), Harvard University Graduate School of Design, Bachelor of Architecture (BArch), Pratt Institute
- **Known for:** Co-founded and scaled Acelab to more than 20,000 architecture and design firms across North America, Won over half of the top 100 architecture firms including Gensler, AECOM, Stantec and CannonDesign as users, Named to Forbes 30 Under 30 (2025)

## Career timeline

- **pre-2019** — Architect at WEISS/MANFREDI and limonLAB, working on building envelopes including U.S. embassy projects and work tied to MIT and Yale
- **2019** — Co-founded Acelab with MIT alumnus Dries Carmeliet
- **2020** — Won the Harvard Real Estate Venture competition; finalist in Harvard Innovation Lab's President's Innovation Challenge; received MIT DesignX and MIT Sandbox grants
- **2021** — Earned MAUD from Harvard GSD; Acelab raised $3.5M seed round led by Pillar VC with Alpaca VC, Draper Associates and the MIT MET fund
- **2025** — Launched Material Hub, an AI-powered material discovery platform
- **2025** — Named to Forbes 30 Under 30
- **2025** — Raised $13.5M Series A led by Navitas Capital with JLL Spark and DivcoWest (announced October 21, 2025)

## Achievements

- Co-founded and scaled Acelab to more than 20,000 architecture and design firms across North America
- Won over half of the top 100 architecture firms including Gensler, AECOM, Stantec and CannonDesign as users
- Named to Forbes 30 Under 30 (2025)
- Raised a total of roughly $35.8M including a $13.5M Series A led by Navitas Capital
- Built a platform spanning thousands of manufacturers and a large catalog of building products
- Won the Harvard Real Estate Venture competition (2020)

## Latest updates

- **2025-10** — Acelab raised $13.5M Series A led by Navitas Capital with JLL Spark and DivcoWest, to build the AI brain for architecture's $2.4 trillion construction materials market.
- **2025-03** — Acelab launched Material Hub, an AI-powered platform for discovering, evaluating and specifying building materials.
- **2025-01** — Named to Forbes 30 Under 30.

## Links

- Website: https://acelabusa.com
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/vardhan-acelab/
- YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=izoF2SN-Nqo

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Profile page: https://yespress.io/vardhan-mehta
Published by YesPress — https://yespress.io
Last updated: 2026-06-03