St. John’s-based CoLab Software on Monday announced the closing of a US$72 million (C$100.9 million) Series C funding round, the largest VC financing in the region in the past two years.

Founded by CEO Adam Keating and CTO Jeremy Andrew in 2017, CoLab makes collaboration software for 3D modelling and in June launched its first AI agent, which it calls AutoReview. Since then, more than 47,000 engineers have joined the waitlist for the product, further accelerating CoLab’s revenue growth with the company saying it is on pace to nearly triple revenue in 2025.

The Series C round announced Monday was led by Toronto-based Intrepid Growth Partners, a growth-stage fund backing the next generation of AI market leaders. The other investors included returning funders Insight Partners (which increased its position with a super pro rata investment), Y Combinator, Pelorus VC, Killick Capital, and Spider Capital.

“Behind every feat of engineering, there’s thousands of design decisions,” said Keating in the statement. “And the most critical decisions in industry still happen slowly — in 20-person meetings, weeks apart. CoLab is changing that. We envision a world where skilled engineers collaborate with AI agents that can access their entire company’s collective knowledge, collapsing design cycles from months to hours.”

The funding announced Monday was the largest venture capital round closed by an Atlantic Canadian company since Dartmouth-based CarbonCure Technologies raised US$80 million in July 2023. The CoLab Series C round also comes one month after St. John’s-based Spellbook, which makes AI products for law firms, closed a US$50 million funding round. These two deals mean that Newfoundland and Labrador is set to account for about 70 percent of the venture capital funding announced in 2025.

A graduate of the Y Combinator accelerator in Silicon Valley, CoLab last year closed a US$21 million Series B funding round led by New York’s Insight Partners. That followed up on its previous US$17 million Series A round a few years earlier. Last month, CoLab was named to the prestigious Deloitte Tech Fast 50, a list of the fastest-growing tech companies in Canada, placing 19th after its revenue increased 1,730 percent over a four-year period.

CoLab said it sells its engineering software to some of the world’s most advanced hardware companies — from next-generation vehicles to renewable energy and medical technology. Its clients include Ford, Lockheed Martin, GE Appliances, Johnson Controls, and Schneider Electric.

These companies’ engineering teams spend months running through countless design iterations, reviews, and tests, using sophisticated tools to predict how every part will perform long before anything physical exists, it said.

AI is transforming this process, accelerating every tool engineers use — from generative computer-aided design that can instantly propose new design concepts to AI-driven simulation that can test those concepts in seconds. But the critical step that AI can’t replace is deciding what’s right, said CoLab.

“Even with faster tools, engineering still depends on human judgment — the knowledge, intuition, and trade-offs captured in design reviews. That’s where CoLab comes in,” said Mark Shulgan, Co-founder and Partner at Intrepid Growth Partners, who recently joined CoLab’s board. “The company is building the decision-making layer that connects people, data, and AI so teams can apply their expertise faster and more effectively than ever before.”

CoLab plans to use the capital to develop new AI agents, build integrations with other engineering and AI applications, expand partnerships, and scale go-to-market teams. It plans to make several major product and partnership announcements before the end of the year, said the statement.

In addition to soaring demand for AutoReview, the company said it found market pull from executive teams at major clients.

“We’ve had executive teams – not just engineering leadership, but CEOs, CFOs, and cross-functional leadership – asking us to build their AI strategies with them,” said Keating. “Many are already making seven-figure bets with CoLab. It's clear AI isn’t just an interesting experiment anymore – it’s a competitive advantage in their top-down strategy.”