CoLab co-founders Jeremy Andrews, left, and Adam Keating. The company's contract with Bombardier is the latest in a string of engagements with large engineering clients.Supplied
Bombardier Inc. BBD-B-T has signed a multiyear, multimillion-dollar contract to use artificial-intelligence software from CoLab AI Inc., one of Atlantic Canada’s fastest-growing startups, to help design and make new business jets.
“Integrating advanced artificial intelligence into our design and engineering processes will further strengthen our ability to deliver world‑class business jets for our customers and will enable our teams to make engineering decisions based on vast amounts of data in real time,” Éric Filion, Bombardier’s executive vice-president of programs and supply chain, said in a news release about the deal. “This collaboration reflects our ongoing commitment to innovation, operational excellence, and the continual advancement of Canadian aerospace capabilities.”
St. John’s-based CoLab sells a cloud-based platform for engineers that pulls in data from their e-mails, spreadsheets, notebooks, computer-aided design software and product life-cycle management programs, making it easier to manage collaborative projects.
Its software analyzes 3-D models and drawings, adding automated markups and comments on machine designs, and identifying critical issues.
The company intends to keep building AI agents that pull in institutional knowledge, which usually resides in the heads of veteran engineers, to inform faster, more effective design decisions and reduce costly product development cycles.
CoLab was founded nine years ago by Newfoundland-born and trained mechanical engineers Adam Keating and Jeremy Andrews after they became frustrated by gaps in computer-aided design and product life-cycle management software they used, which dragged on development timelines. After working at big innovative companies in the U.S., they returned home to start a company to address that issue, figuring it would appeal broadly to engineers.
The company became one of Canada’s fastest-growing tech startups and last November raised US$72-million in venture capital financing led by AI-focused Canadian financier Intrepid Growth Partners in a deal valuing CoLab at roughly US$500-million. CoLab expects to nearly double its employee count over the course of 2026 to close to 300 people and hopes to surpass US$100-million in annualized revenues in 2027. It is also set to announce several key product enhancements in the next few months.
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The Bombardier contract is the latest in a string of larger-scale engagements CoLab has struck with companies including ExxonMobil Corp. XOM-N and Bobcat, some of them valued into the seven figures, to help the giant customers deploy AI at scale to programs and integrate it throughout their processes, data and enterprise systems.
Those deals – and dozens more the company has in the works over the next year – address a growing concern among engineering leaders. Many fear that if they don’t adopt AI broadly within a year or two their competitors could surpass them, according to a 2025 study released by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s NANDA (Networked Agents and Decentralized AI) initiative. While many large enterprises are evaluating AI tools, few have been implemented, and 19 out of 20 enterprise AI deployments have failed, the study found.
“There’s this opportunity and fear around AI and what that all means,” said Mr. Keating, CoLab’s chief executive officer, in an interview. “We’ve seen a lot of pressure since the fall on our customer base to figure out what to do with AI, in a responsible way, that will actually help the business create productivity and not chaos.”
He said the company has been spending “a lot of time with bigger companies like Bombardier who are not just betting on CoLab as a solution to a problem, but betting on this as a platform that helps them enable AI across the business and make their engineering more effective.”
Editor’s note: A previous version of this article incorrectly stated CoLab has struck seven-figure contracts with companies including ExxonMobil and Bobcat. The Bobcat contract is not of that size.