P-1 AI raises $50M Series A led by NEA, adds ex-GE chief Jeff Immelt to board
What's the deal? P-1 AI has closed a $50 million Series A led by New Enterprise Associates (NEA) to scale Archie, an agentic AI engineer for hardware disciplines including mechanical, electrical, thermal, fluids, and systems design. The San Mateo startup sells to data centre, automotive, and aerospace and defence customers.
Who's involved? Jeff Immelt, former chairman and chief executive officer of General ElectricDealroom has a profile for this one. Try Dealroom →, joins the board as an NEA venture partner. NEA partner Lila Tretikov, previously Microsoft's deputy chief technology officer, comes on as a board observer.
They join co-founder and chief executive officer Paul Eremenko, the former Airbus chief technology officer, and Radical VenturesDealroom has a profile for this one. Try Dealroom → partner Molly Welch. The round also added angels Cameron McCord of Nominal and Nick Marwell and Jo Zhu Kennedy of Anthropic, alongside existing backers Jeff Dean, Peter Welinder, and Bob van Luijt.
Why now? The Series A follows a $23 million seed round led by Radical Ventures in 2025. Eremenko said interest from major industrial firms — "employers of most of the world's engineers" — has been "extraordinary."
What's the product? Archie is built to fit into existing engineering teams and uses the same complex tools human engineers use. It currently performs at the level of a junior mechanical and electrical engineer, and the company says it can complete end-to-end engineering workflows in a fraction of the time humans need. P-1 AI's stated aim is engineering artificial superintelligence.
What's the money for? Eremenko said the capital will grow the team and "10X the compute" for training custom models. Over the past year, P-1 AI set up design partnerships with several industrial original equipment manufacturers in data centre cooling and critical power systems.
The signal: At $50 million, the round sits in the top 4% of US enterprise software Series A deals of all time, a marker of how aggressively capital is chasing AI aimed at physical engineering rather than software alone. Backing from an ex-GE chief and AI luminaries signals investor conviction that industrial workflows are the next frontier for agentic tools.
Read more: Business Insider
Image credit: Jefferson Lab
