Synaps raises $3.6M for an AI platform for architects, taking aim at AutoCAD

Austrian-Albanian startup Synaps has closed a $3.6M pre-seed round and is trying to carve out a spot between Figma, AI generators, and classic CAD systems. The company is building a browser-based tool for architects that is meant to speed up drafting, rendering, and collaboration, and eventually to compete with AutoCAD.

The round and traction

Synaps announced the round on April 30, 2026. US-based Plug and Play led it, with Croatia's Fil Rouge Capital joining. It continues a fairly unusual start for the team: the beta launched in November 2025 in Tirana, not in London, Berlin, or San Francisco. The launch drew well-known architects and Albanian Prime Minister Edi Rama, who studied painting himself and has long backed prominent urban projects.

In the five months after launch, the product gained 60,000 users, 1,500 daily active users, and hundreds of paying customers, according to the company, even though the full release is not out yet. Before the beta started, Synaps collected 10,000 pre-registrations, and promotion through YouTube, Instagram, and LinkedIn brought in more than 10 million views at minimal cost. The team grew from four to seventeen people, and after the founders' trip to Silicon Valley the startup opened an office in San Francisco.

"We wanted to show real numbers, traction, and trust from specialist users," says CEO

Brendon Ahmeti.

What Synaps is building

Synaps describes its product as a mix of Figma and Lovable, but for architects. The core of the service is a browser canvas with real-time collaborative editing and an input bar where users can describe a task in natural language. Instead of the usual set of CAD commands, the user states an intent and the system turns it into a drawing or visualization. Internally the company calls this approach vibe designing: essentially, design through text prompts and rapid iteration.

• Collaborative editing right in the browser
• Floor-plan generation from a text description
• Vecy AI for vector drawing of floor plans
• Rendering in 2D, 3D, and video from a single pipeline
• One workspace for drafting, presentation, and revisions

The key module is called Vecy AI. According to Synaps, it is trained on architects' behavioral patterns and can cut the number of commands by 80% and speed up drafting roughly 50 times compared with conventional tools. Rendering, the startup says, can be 100–1000 times faster than existing solutions, depending on project complexity. These figures come from the company's internal tests and have not yet been confirmed by an independent audit.

The challenge to Autodesk and AutoCAD

This is where the direct conflict with Autodesk begins. The AutoCAD family holds about 39% of the global CAD software market, and revenue from AutoCAD and AutoCAD LT last fiscal year was $1.79B, against total Autodesk revenue of over $6B. For BIM workflows, Autodesk's Revit dominates. The problem for newcomers is that these products have been the de facto standard for decades.

But Synaps is betting that the industry is tired of desktop software logic, overloaded teams, and weak collaboration. Investors are not the only ones watching this bet. According to Synaps, six of the ten most prominent architecture firms in the world have tested or deployed the platform, and Bjarke Ingels and Kengo Kuma gave feedback. Plug and Play explains its investment by two pain points in the industry: rendering that takes too long and a fragmented set of tools. If the team can truly bring drafting, visualization, and project discussion into one interface, it will tap real demand rather than an invented one.

The plan from here: release Version 1 in summer 2026 and add more than 20 new AI tools for drafting and post-processing. The goal is 150,000 users by September 2026 and 300,000 by year-end. The US office will scale in parallel, and the company is already eyeing the end of 2026 as a window for its next, "double-digit" multimillion-dollar seed round. The market Synaps is targeting is not only architecture firms but roughly 200 million drafters and designers worldwide.

What this means

It is too early to call Synaps an AutoCAD killer, but its trajectory shows where professional software is heading: from heavy desktop programs to browser-based AI environments where speed, collaboration, and natural-language entry matter. If the startup confirms its numbers at full release, architectural software will gain one of its most visible new challengers in years.

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