Mak9 secures $34 million for engineering design software, with smart models that turn laser scans into infrastructure maps

Alex Baikoffitz discovered early that manufacturing advanced survey devices does not solve the biggest challenge for the infrastructure sector, because the real burden starts after data capture. When Baikoffitz founded Mak9 Robotics in 2021, his ambition was to produce faster and cheaper hardware for visual inspection in order to reduce complex procedures and modernize slow processes in the U.S. construction sector. After a few years the company managed to build that hardware, but field testing revealed a pivotal fact to the founder: the bottleneck was not in the efficiency of the capture devices, but in the workflows that require converting the stream of data flowing from laser scanners and imaging systems into engineering surveys usable in design decisions and asset management.

One executive told Baikoffitz frankly that they do not need cheaper hardware, but intelligent software that raises the efficiency of delivering major transportation planning initiatives.This lesson prompted Baikoffitz to drop the word “Robotics” from the company’s identity and shift entirely toward developing computer-aided design software powered by artificial intelligence. The bet proved its worth quickly in the market, attracting roughly a hundred clients in the private beta and seeing the platform adopted in more than 2,500 projects to date. This momentum paved the way for closing a first financing round of $34 million, led by First Round Capital and Bismar Venture Partners, with participation from Broadness, which specializes in AI software for real estate and construction, and Quait Capital.

The platform targets the slowest stage of the infrastructure cycle, the drafting and engineering design phase that has for decades been the exclusive domain of traditional tools from companies such as Autodesk and Bentley Systems, where project delivery takes months and manual drawing requires a full week for each mile of road.The company’s software increases the speed of converting data into plans by a factor of ten and sharply reduces expenses.This acceleration gives civil-engineering and surveying firms an immediate ability to expand their capacity to take on larger projects. Because off-the-shelf commercial models fail to provide the centimetre-level accuracy required in critical projects, the company has, since 2024, trained internal artificial-intelligence models specialized in converting laser-scan datasets and multimodal imagery into approved surveying geometry that includes curb edges and road-alignment planning with extreme precision.

The system automatically generates the first draft of the plan, providing licensed engineers with point-adjustment tools and quality-review features to safeguard legal liability.This architecture ensures that human expertise remains at the core of the process, as building codes for transportation projects require a certified engineer’s signature, making them legally accountable for the outputs. The company’s move aligns with a broader race to automate construction phases, with Civil Grid raising $26 million in August to build a underground-infrastructure mapping platform, while Blueprint AI scaled up to produce code-compliant architectural plans in a matter of minutes, illustrating capital flowing toward design bottlenecks rather than surface-level interfaces.

This shift has a direct operational implication for engineering-consulting and construction firms in the Gulf states and Egypt, where the region is experiencing a surge in the deployment of transportation networks and smart cities that generate millions of laser- and drone-derived survey points each day. The real impact here is not tied to importing new imaging devices, but to reassessing subscriptions to traditional design software and moving the engineer’s role from labor-intensive manual drawing of lines and curbs to the verification and adoption of digitally generated plans. The experience shows project managers in the region that boosting the production capacity of infrastructure decades no longer requires a vertical expansion of engineering staff, but the deployment of custom models that integrate surveying directly with engineering drawing.