Mach9 raises $34M to scale AI CAD software after ditching hardware

Mach9 has raised $34 million to push its AI-powered CAD software further into civil engineering and surveying, according to TechCrunch. When it launched in 2021, the San Francisco startup wanted to make surveying hardware that was better, faster and cheaper than what was on the market. It has since walked away from that plan. From scanners to software Four Carnegie Mellon University researchers founded Mach9: Alexander Baikovitz, who serves as CEO, Zachary Sussman, the CTO, plus Haowen Shi and Michael Mong. Their original product was a vehicle-mounted scanning system. In 2024, the company switched fully to a software model. Customer feedback reportedly drove the move. Clients were not short on data. They were short on ways to process it. LiDAR, the laser-based scanning tech surveyors use to capture roads and structures, produces dense 3D maps called point clouds. That tracing step is traditionally done by hand in CAD, or computer-aided design, software. What Digital Surveyor actually does Mach9’s flagship product is called Digital Surveyor. Version 2 launched in March 2026 as a web-based CAD platform. The software uses AI to automate feature extraction from LiDAR point clouds. Put ...