We are thrilled to announce that CapitalG has led Motif’s Series A round to support the company as it creates the next-generation platform for building design. Motif is led by design software luminaries Amar Hanspal (former co-CEO and CPO at Autodesk) and Brian Matthews (former VP of Platform Engineering at Autodesk) and has raised $46M in total. We are thrilled to partner with Amar, Brian, and the entire Motif team on their journey to revolutionize building design.
Building Our Physical World
Professionals in the AEC (Architecture, Engineering, and Construction) industry quietly shape the world around us. Every single building is the output of a team of AEC professionals whose unbounded imagination, meticulous craft, and rigorous engineering came together to make that structure a reality. Whether they are creating shelter, assembling community, or underpinning trillions of dollars in GDP, these ~11M global professionals combine art with science to make what is, by any measure, a profound impact on our lives.
An Aging Toolbox
While it has evolved significantly beyond pencils and blueprint, tooling for AEC is still far from the world of cursors gliding effortlessly across screens that we are accustomed to today. AEC professionals are unfortunately stuck in the past with a dilapidated set of digital tools that have corroded far beyond repair. While they are tremendous businesses commanding ~$8B+ in revenue and ~$175B+ in market cap, incumbent leaders in AEC design software have remained married to decades-old product and architectural choices that are holding AEC professionals back; observing the AEC workflow today is like looking back in time to the 1990s. Leading AEC professionals who are creating the most sophisticated structures in our world, from skyscrapers to hospitals and stadiums, often must wait tens of minutes to propagate a single change to a building design. Collaboration, which is key to successful building design, is a fully manual undertaking: AEC professionals must either email static design files or literally mark printouts pinned to the wall.
While the advent of generative AI is certainly a catalyst to reimagine what is possible in AEC, more important are the deep technical foundations required to bring AEC to the 21st century. AEC tooling must be completely reimagined to be cloud-native, collaboration focused, computationally efficient, open by default, and easily pluggable.
Moving Fast Without Breaking Things
Importantly, unlike many other software categories, reliability and safety are paramount in designing the physical world. Buildings must stand with unquestioned fidelity and instill in us a deep sense of certainty. The burden of these mortal stakes is not lost on AEC professionals and borne by the tools they use: AEC professionals need modern tools but, more importantly, they need trustworthy partners to build them incredibly reliable software.
Amar Hanspal and Brian Matthews are the perfect founders to deliver both reliability and revolution to AEC professionals. Amar Hanspal is an exceptional leader and proven product visionary in AEC. He was formerly Co-CEO of Autodesk, CPO at Autodesk, and Co-Founder and CEO of Bright Machines. Brian Matthews is a highly skilled engineer and forward-looking technologist with extensive experience in AEC. He was formerly VP of Platform Engineering at Autodesk, VP and Group CTO of Information Modeling and Platform Group at Autodesk, and Co-Founder and CTO at Bright Machines. The other founding team members, Matt Jezyk and Lira Nikolovska, were impactful leaders at Autodesk, Tesla, Rivian, Phillips Design, and Bright Machines. The reality is, there are very few people in the world who have both the technical skills and trust required to make a difference in this space. This team is outstanding even within that few.
Amar and Brian understand this problem space deeply and have seen firsthand just how encumbered AEC customers are by their tooling, and just how far incumbents are from innovating in this space. Balancing the requisite sense of innovation and reliability required in AEC, Amar and Brian have recruited a team of leading experts across the technical stack to build for their customers the open building design platform of the future.
Introducing Motif
Motif is creating the next-generation platform for building design. Motif will deliver open data standards, real-time collaboration, instant responsiveness, and deep automation to AEC professionals, replacing the decades-old tooling they use today. To do this, Amar, Brian, and their team of industry-leaders are innovating within the most technically challenging frontiers in software (e.g. 3D at scale in the browser, AI, open data architecture, etc.) and collaborating with leading software vendors in AI-powered 3D world-building and data interoperability.
Importantly, Motif is centered on the principles of building for the long-term and establishing deep partnerships with customers. Motif is already building hand-in-hand with some of the world’s leading design and architecture firms, plotting a long-term product roadmap to redefine building design as we know it today. While the vision is ambitious and the journey is long, Amar, Brian, and the Motif team are dedicated to consistently delivering for AEC professionals one step at a time with reliability in-mind. If this sounds exciting to you, Motif is hiring best-in-class technical and go-to-market talent across roles and geographies.
CapitalG’s Investment
We’re excited to share that CapitalG has led the Series A round in Motif, with participation from Redpoint Ventures, which led the previously unannounced Seed, amounting to $46M in total capital. Baukunst also participated in both rounds. We’re honored to partner with Amar, Brian, Matt, Lira and the rest of the Motif team as they revolutionize building design and usher AEC into the 21st century.