Newfoundland’s CoLab Software has raised $28.6 million CAD ($21 million USD) in Series B funding as it looks to expand its team and incorporate artificial intelligence (AI) into its engineering design collaboration and communications platform.
The company is also investing some of its Series B funding toward developing its platform, including AI solutions.
The all-equity round, which closed at the end of April, was led by Insight Partners with participation from returning investors Y Combinator, Killick Capital, and Pelorus VC as well as Spider Capital and Panache Ventures. Michael Shephard from Insight Partners and CoLab’s own chief strategy officer, Taylor Young, joined the company’s board following the round.
CoLab was “default alive” (meaning it was expected to reach profitability before using up its runway) prior to the Series B raise, co-founder and CEO Adam Keating said in a LinkedIn post. The company had grown its annual recurring revenue by a factor of ten since its 2021 Series A round, Keating said. While the company “didn’t need to raise the round,” he added that CoLab decided to keep up with “aggressive market pull” over the last 12 months by expanding its engineering teams.
CoLab said it will add between 30 to 40 jobs to its St. John’s, N.L headquarters, including three executive hires in a vice-president of people, vice-president of customer success, and vice-president of sales, which has already been filled. The hiring wave will bring its total headcount from 86 to 125 by the end of the year, according to Keating.
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Co-founded in 2017 by Keating and CTO Jeremy Andrews, CoLab’s tool turns 2D and 3D computer-aided design files that can be uploaded into the cloud and edited by multiple users. Engineering teams can send their designs for review where others can leave feedback and comments for discussion. The tool also captures analytics on the average time taken to complete reviews, address feedback, and common issues in the review process.
The company is also investing some of its Series B funding toward developing its platform and intends to use the feedback and data collected from its tool to train its own machine learning and AI solutions.
While CoLab already offers AI-generated summaries of design reviews, it is currently developing ReviewAI, which aims to help inform engineers decisions and automate routine tasks and administrative work. CoLab said all AI solutions will be opt-in.
CoLab previously raised a pre-seed round of $600,000 CAD in 2018 before becoming the first company from Atlantic Canada to be accepted into the Y Combinator accelerator program and immediately raised a $2.7 million-CAD seed round after the accelerator’s Demo Day.
The startup went on to raise a $21-million CAD ($17 million USD) Series A round in October 2021 to further expand its sales team. Insight Partners managing director Josh Fredberg joined CoLab’s board of directors as a result of that round.