I love buildings.
Buildings seamlessly combine soaring artistry with practical functionality, generating a profound sense of place. Who can remain unmoved by the graceful curves of the Sydney Opera House, the quiet solemnity of Notre Dame, or the ambitious reach of the Freedom Tower? Buildings shape the physical framework of our lives, influencing how we live, work, and interact. They offer shelter and warmth and form the stage for our memories to unfold and communities to flourish.
During my time as co-CEO and Chief Product Officer at Autodesk, I had the privilege of collaborating with some of the most talented minds involved in the craft of building. The practitioners of the architecture, engineering, and construction (AEC) industry are society’s unsung heroes— visionaries who rise to the challenge of combining creativity with critical problem-solving. Yet, despite their brilliance, they are in danger of being shackled by outdated digital tools.
Simply put, the AEC industry is using 20th century tools to design 21st century buildings.
Digital tools play an important role in the collaborative, iterative process necessary to deliver a well-designed building. However, the evolution of these tools over the past 25 years has been disappointingly stagnant. While software for fields like gaming, product design and customer support has embraced intuitive interfaces, real-time collaboration, and AI-driven automation, tools for the building industry remain hopelessly rooted in technology from the late 1990s.
This lack of innovation isn’t due to a lack of opportunity—the AEC software market is worth $7 billion, growing at a 12.5% CAGR. Instead, it stems from complacency among incumbent vendors with near-monopolistic control. For startups, taking on the challenge of developing new tools can be daunting. The complexity of the software development involved in building something that handles both the scale and level of detail of buildings combined with the challenge of taking on an entrenched incumbent in the market is not for the faint of heart.
I refuse to accept this status quo. I cannot accept a future where we can hail self-driving cars, unlock buildings with facial recognition, or book flights using AI-powered software, yet architects and engineers must rely on software designed in the 1990s as they craft cutting-edge structures. I refuse to accept that someone designing a carbon-friendly, environmentally-resilient building must wait 45 minutes to see if a single edit took effect.
In 2023, Brian Mathews (former Product CTO at Autodesk) and I founded Motif Systems, Inc. to take this challenge head-on. Matt Jezyk and Lira Nikolovska joined our founding team. We are tackling some of the hardest and most exciting technical frontiers in software (e.g. 3D at scale in the browser, AI, open data architecture, etc.) with some of the top talent and leading advisors in the world. Our team now comprises experts from a variety of fields - BIM, cloud computing, and machine learning. These folks have helped shape some of the most iconic software and products in recent times, including Revit, OnShape, Twitter, Vimeo, and even Tesla.
Our mission is to revolutionize building design by merging geometry, cloud services, and machine learning to enable a dynamic, collaborative, and intelligent process. We’re developing a platform where:
- Data is open and linked, fostering transparency and accessibility.
- Global teams collaborate seamlessly with real-time updates and tracking.
- Models are responsive and dynamic, adapting instantly to changes.
- Repetitive tasks are fully automated and options are generated, freeing practitioners to focus on innovation.
- Building information evolves to building intelligence, enabling smarter design decisions.
This isn’t just about creating applications—it’s about building an open platform that makes it radically simpler to build upon. Our platform will enable participation from anywhere, on any device, with modern user experience patterns that reshapes the future of building design, transforming it into a dynamic, collaborative, and inclusive process.
Building this system requires deep collaboration with customers and significant capital.
On the customer front, we’ve been fortunate to partner with the world’s leading design and architecture firms. You would recognize their work on iconic airports, skyscrapers, hospitals, museums, and stadiums around the world. We’re also collaborating with cutting-edge software vendors in AI-powered 3D world-building, data interoperability and other domains. In the coming weeks, we’ll share more about these collaborations.
On the capital front, we’ve raised $46 million from visionary investors like Alex Bard (Redpoint Ventures) and Jill (Greenberg) Chase (CapitalG), who led our Seed and Series A rounds, respectively. Axel Bichara (Baukunst) was an early believer and supported both rounds.
We know that this vision is easier to describe than it is to build. It will take years of sustained effort and multiple, incremental steps. Just as Amazon Web Services began with a simple storage solution (S3) and grew into a multi-service, scalable infrastructure, our journey will start with a first step and continue with consistent execution over a number of years. We are up for that challenge.
This work isn’t just economically significant—it’s emotionally and socially transformative. Consider the building industry: it represents $13 trillion in global GDP, employs 150 million people, and is the world’s second-largest sector. Its environmental impact is staggering, accounting for 40% of global energy use, 30-40% of greenhouse gas emissions, and 25-30% of global solid waste. Making a dent in these numbers by enabling better design is important.
One of the more profound moments during my career was visiting the children’s cancer treatment ward at St. Bartholomew’s Hospital in London in 2012. My host showed me first hand how 3D digital technology was used during the design and construction process and why it made a crucial difference in such an impactful project. This experience moved me deeply and forever changed how I view technology.
We’re building something that will directly impact lives and the future of our planet.
Having spent my career in design software, I want to build a different kind of company. One that is both ambitious and humble. Where the team cares about its craft and practices genuine, deep collaboration with customers. Where we are proud of the work we do, but never, ever satisfied. Motif is that company.
Sounds interesting? Then join us on this journey —whether as a customer, partner, or colleague. Together, we can reshape the way buildings are designed and constructed, making a lasting impact on the world.
Amar
