Mach9 Raises $34M Series A to Accelerate AI CAD for Civil Infrastructure

Turning 3D laser scans of physical infrastructure into usable engineering drawings has long stalled civil engineering workflows. While mobile survey teams can map miles of roadway in a single afternoon using modern LiDAR rigs, converting those point clouds into vector blueprints inside legacy computer-aided design software typically requires drafters to trace curbs, signs, and lane markings line by line. With resident surveying licenses in the United States down 24% between 2011 and 2025 and federal infrastructure funding surging, that manual drafting step has turned into a major choke point.

San Francisco-based Mach9 announced a $34 million Series A funding round to scale its automated CAD platform, bringing its cumulative funding to $49 million. The round was co-led by First Round Capital and Bessemer Venture Partners, with participation from Prudence and existing backer Quiet Capital. The capital injection comes as Mach9 expands from private beta into broader commercial deployment across public agencies and engineering firms.

Moving from Inspection Hardware to AI Drafting

Mach9 began in 2021 under the name Mach9 Robotics, originally aiming to build lower-cost, faster hardware systems for visual infrastructure inspections. However, conversations with civil engineering leaders revealed that capturing data was no longer the primary hurdle. "The real pain was in their workflows," co-founder and chief executive Alexander Baikovitz told TechCrunch. "We saw how tedious it was for civil engineering organizations to take data from these amazing laser scanners and image data capture systems and turn that into a usable survey."

Baikovitz dropped "Robotics" from the corporate banner and directed the team toward AI CAD software. The company built custom machine learning models trained specifically to extract survey-grade geometry with centimeter-level precision from multimodal imagery and LiDAR point clouds. Off-the-shelf vision models routinely fail to deliver the geometric tolerances that civil infrastructure demands, making internal model development central to the company's approach.

The resulting software, Digital Surveyor, creates an initial draft of a site drawing directly from point clouds collected by standard field equipment. Drafters and licensed engineers then review the vectorized output, adjusting vertices and modifying physical features such as utility poles, wires, curbs, and striping within browser-based editing tools. Because errors in a survey map directly dictate mistakes during field construction, human-in-the-loop review ensures that licensed practitioners can sign off on deliverables.

According to reporting by GIM International, Mach9 reports that its platform drafts drawings up to 10 times faster and at one-fifth the cost of conventional manual drafting. In an analysis published by Bessemer Venture Partners, the firm noted that Mach9 bills via usage-based pricing per mile or acre surveyed, aligning directly with project line items rather than standard per-seat IT budgets.

Commercial Deployments Across 50 States

Mach9's software has been deployed on more than 2,500 projects across all 50 states, covering more than 100,000 miles of infrastructure corridors. Its customer roster includes private engineering firms such as WSP, HNTB, and NV5, as well as public transportation agencies including Caltrans, the Minnesota Department of Transportation, and the Maryland State Highway Administration.

Specific field deployments demonstrate how the software operates across distinct infrastructure sectors:

• Highway safety: Caltrans deployed Mach9 along Interstate 8 in San Diego to inventory roadway rumble strips and related safety infrastructure, letting highway engineers quickly spot maintenance gaps.
• Municipal safety: Engineering firm Kier + Wright used the system to map street geometry and improve pedestrian safety near schools in San Francisco.
• Utility and broadband expansion: In Louisiana, telecommunications provider Fibersmith used the platform to streamline surveys required to connect 125,000 homes and businesses to fiber internet.

Rob Ashley, high-definition laser scanning technology director at engineering firm Pennoni, stated that Mach9 enables his firm to complete 50% more volume with the same experienced staff, helping them absorb excess demand without hiring additional manual drafters.

The Founding Team

Mach9 was founded by roboticists who met at Carnegie Mellon University's Robotics Institute. Alexander Baikovitz earned both his bachelor's in mechanical engineering and master's in robotics from CMU, focusing on automated perception systems. Co-founder Haowen Shi also graduated from CMU with degrees in electrical and computer engineering and robotics. Together with co-founders Michael Mong and Zach Sussman, the early team brought previous experience developing autonomous perception and sensing systems at institutions including Tesla, SpaceX, Apple, NASA, and Google X.

The leadership group also includes Jaime Suarez, co-founder and chief executive who previously served as Chief Digital Officer at Philip Morris International, co-founder and chief marketing officer Albert Moufarrij, and co-founder Joshua Spisak.

Where Mach9 Is Hiring

With $34 million in fresh capital and roughly 15 current employees, Mach9 is expanding its technical, go-to-market, and domain-specialist headcount across San Francisco and remote locations.

On the technical side, the company is recruiting for core model training and frontend visual rendering. The engineering group is seeking an ML Engineer, Research ($180,000–$300,000) and an ML Engineer, Product ($180,000–$300,000) to refine proprietary feature-extraction pipelines. Leadership technical roles include a remote or onsite Head of ML ($275,000–$400,000), while interface rendering is supported by a Software Engineer - 3D Graphics ($130,000–$180,000) position.

To bridge the gap between AI outputs and civil standards, the team employs licensed survey talent directly, listing an onsite QA Survey Technician ($80,000–$100,000) to evaluate AI drafts against real-world specs. Commercial growth is driven by openings for an onsite Head of Sales ($350,000–$400,000), a Head of Growth ($180,000–$220,000), and a Business Development Representative ($105,000–$120,000).

Open Roles at Mach9

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