San Francisco-based P-1 AI has raised $50 million in an initial closing of its Series A financing round led by New Enterprise Associates (NEA), providing fresh capital to expand deployment of its engineering software across industrial customers in data centers, automotive, aerospace, and defense. The financing comes less than a year after the company raised a $23 million seed round led by Canada’s Radical Ventures.
P-1’s main product Archie is designed to work alongside engineering teams by using the same computer-aided design (CAD), simulation, and engineering software already deployed inside industrial organizations. The system is intended to perform engineering tasks across the product development process, from interpreting technical requirements to generating designs and supporting validation work.
“Interest in Archie from major industrial firms—employers of most of the world’s engineers—has been extraordinary and emphasizes the need to scale our product and deployment teams,” said Paul Eremenko, co-founder and CEO at P-1.
P-1 says its approach centers on generating synthetic engineering datasets—artificially generated information models used to train machine learning models, test physical simulations, and optimize designs when real-world telemetry or component data is scarce. This overcomes generative AI’s challenges in physical systems, allowing models to learn physical relationships rather than relying solely on existing product designs.
Archie is designed to automate the reasoning tasks engineers perform, such as interpreting technical requirements, evaluating design trade-offs, developing product concepts, and selecting appropriate engineering tools for downstream analysis, before the detailed design work begins.
“This capital will enable us to grow the team and 10X the compute for training custom models to meet customer needs,” Eremenko said.
Eremenko brings a background spanning aerospace, defense, and advanced technology to P-1. He previously served as chief technology officer at Airbus, becoming the company’s youngest CTO at age 35, before taking a similar role at United Technologies Corp.
Earlier in his career, Eremenko was a program manager and deputy director at the U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (Darpa), where he oversaw robotics and satellite initiatives. He later led Google’s Project Ara, an effort to develop a modular smartphone platform. Before launching P-1 AI, Eremenko co-founded and led Universal Hydrogen, a startup developing hydrogen fuel-cell technology for commercial aviation.
P-1’s strategy differs by focusing on engineering reasoning rather than developing another design application, reinforcing its software as an assistant that works alongside existing engineering tools instead of competing directly with them.
The company said Archie currently operates at a level comparable to a junior mechanical or electrical engineer and has been trained using proprietary engineering datasets, structured design representations, custom post-trained models, and software that enables continual learning of engineering skills.
The financing also strengthens the company’s leadership and governance, with former General Electric Chairman and CEO Jeff Immelt joining P-1’s board. Former Microsoft deputy chief technology officer Lila Tretikov, now head of AI strategy at NEA, will serve as a board observer. The company also expanded its roster of angel investors with executives from Anthropic and engineering software startup Nominal.
Founded in 1977, NEA manages more than $35 billion in assets, as of 2025-end, focusing on technology and healthcare companies. Over five decades, NEA has backed more than 285 companies that have gone public and has recorded more than 510 portfolio company mergers and acquisitions.
“P-1 AI is taking a differentiated, deeply technical approach to one of the hardest problems in AI: engineering reasoning for the physical world. The company has assembled a great technical team, paired with the product discipline and customer focus needed to pursue an ambitious mission,” said Tretikov.
NEA’s recent investments include co-leading Horizon3’s $250 million Series E financing for its cybersecurity platform and leading Databento’s $97 million Series B round for financial market data infrastructure. The firm also led Centralize’s $19 million funding round for relationship intelligence software and participated in growth financings for video AI company Twelve Labs and materials discovery startup CuspAI.
