Rayon raises €4 million from Northzone and Foundamental to launch its collaborative architectural design tool.

[Embargo lifts September 27th.]

• Rayon was founded in 2021 by Bastien Dolla and Stanislas Chaillou to make it easier for designers and architects to collaborate on architectural assets (floor plans, mood boards, etc)
• Building design is today an overly-fragmented process, with designers having to jump from one software to the other, and PDF export being the de facto medium for exchanges across the industry.
• In a similar way that Figma brought interface design tools to the browser and improved collaboration for web and product designers, Rayon hopes to achieve the same technological shift for architecture, engineering and construction industries (AEC).
• The startup has raised a total of €5.75M in funding from leading investors Northzone and Foundamental, Seedcamp and angels including legendary architect Norman Foster.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QaaawcdgWuk

Paris, 18th September 2023: Rayon - the collaborative design tool for the architecture, engineering and construction industries (AEC) - is announcing today it has raised €4 million in seed funding co-led by Northzone and existing investor Foundamental. Previous investor Seedcamp and angel investors, including legendary architect Norman Foster (Foster + Partners), also participated in the round. The funding will be used to expand the team as the software officially launches out of beta today and accelerates its go-to-market strategy.

Founded in 2021 by former civil servant and entrepreneur Bastien Dolla and architect and Machine Learning engineer Stanislas Chaillou, Rayon is on a mission to transform the AEC industries thanks to its collaborative design software. Currently, the majority of architecture design is conducted in silos, with designers limited to sharing PDFs via emails or printing out floor plans to annotate. This lack of efficient collaborative tools holds projects back and prevents the industry from progressing. Rayon was created to solve this challenge.

Rayon’s app visuals

Bringing collaboration to architecture design

Since the 1980s, the architecture and construction software sector has been dominated by the same legacy software. Whilst these tools were groundbreaking at the time and have transformed how people design buildings, they have many limitations: such legacy tools are designed for high-performance, desktop computers, with studios having to fork out for expensive licenses, and restrictions on how they share and collaborate on a project. As a result, only using PDFs to share files makes it hard for professionals to transmit and share data, while the industry remains captive due to proprietary file formats.

Rayon was founded to improve the design process by making it more collaborative and accessible to teams and stakeholders. As a browser-based tool, Rayon can be run from any operating system, anywhere, enabling teams to collaborate on 2D floor plans in real-time, making the process much faster and more agile. In a similar way that Figma brought interface design tools to the browser and improved collaboration, Rayon hopes to achieve the same technological shift for the AEC industries.

Rayon’s users can import a variety of files, including images, PDF, and CAD documents (DWG, DXF), and then get to work using its design and sharing features. From drawing and annotations to layouts and styling, Rayon has everything designers need to output their work from simple feasibility studies to detailed, rendered floor plans. One-click link sharing makes it easier than ever to work with colleagues and stakeholders to incorporate revisions and make changes based on real-time feedback instead of being locked away in email inboxes. Early customers have already reported that the platform makes their work up to three times faster, improving quality, efficiency and productivity.