Newforma acquires Lumi AI to bring checkable answers to construction project data
Lumi’s engine will extend Newforma’s AI assistant and project dashboards. The company promises answers tied to source records, but rollout details remain unannounced.
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Lumi’s engine will extend Newforma’s AI assistant and project dashboards. The company promises answers tied to source records, but rollout details remain unannounced.
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The completed acquisition gives Newforma Lumi AI’s analytics technology and engineering team, but the product integration is still to come and financial terms were not disclosed. Lumi’s semantic layer is intended to help Newforma’s Vojo assistant and Konekt dashboards answer questions across existing project systems, with answers users can check against source records. The first integrations will target workflows with verifiable records; Newforma says it will expand from there, but has not provided rollout details.
Lumi developed its semantic layer over three years to interpret construction data across systems while preserving context such as RFIs, submittals and project communications.
Newforma’s planned examples include identifying delayed RFI responses, recurring issue patterns and submittal cycles drifting from a firm’s baseline.
Lumi CEO Ibrahim Ashqar said the startup pursued a sale after it struggled to raise a $10 million–$20 million Series A, despite triple-digit annual recurring revenue growth.
Newforma wants construction teams to get AI answers they can check against their own project records—not just confident replies. On October 21, 2026, the project-information software company announced its acquisition of Toronto-based Lumi AI. The purchase is complete, but the promised analytics integration into Newforma’s products is still ahead, with rollout details to follow.
Financial terms were not disclosed. Lumi cofounder and chief technology officer Tudor Boiangiu is joining Newforma as vice president of AI engineering, while Lumi’s engineering team will remain in Toronto. The deal brings Newforma both the analytics technology and the people who built it.
Newforma serves architecture, engineering, construction and building-owner firms. Their project histories span design tools, document systems, email, Teams messages and field records. Newforma’s stated approach is to connect those existing sources rather than require firms to consolidate their work into one system.
Lumi supplies what the company calls a semantic layer: software that maps what operational data means, rather than simply where it is stored. Newforma says that layer, developed over three years, lets questions reach across systems while preserving the context needed to interpret the answers.
That context includes requests for information, or RFIs, submitted during projects; submittals; coordination issues; and communication history. Newforma says its project-data structure reflects more than 20 years of work in the sector. The intended benefit is an answer grounded in how a construction project works, not just a search result containing matching words.
According to Newforma, Lumi’s engine asks clarifying questions when a request is vague, shows the logic behind its answers and flags data-quality problems. Those are the company’s stated safeguards, not independently verified performance results. Newforma frames the standard around decisions that can carry liability: answers should be explainable, checkable against source data and accurate enough to use.
Our customers don't need another AI that sounds confident, they need answers they can verify.
Peter Cannone, CEO of Newforma, in the acquisition announcement
Lumi’s technology will extend Vojo, the AI assistant Newforma introduced in May at Newforma World 2026. Vojo’s planned capabilities include plain-language search and questions spanning multiple projects. Lumi adds the analytics layer intended to turn those questions into verifiable answers inside Newforma Konekt’s project dashboards.
Newforma describes three examples of what Konekt is intended to surface:
The first integration work will focus on workflows where users can check an answer against a project record they already know to be correct. Newforma says it will broaden the scope from there.
Lumi cofounder and CEO Ibrahim Ashqar told AgFunderNews that the startup decided to pursue an exit at the end of May after struggling to secure a $10 million–$20 million Series A. AgFunderNews disclosed that its parent company, AgFunder, is a Lumi investor.
Ashqar said Lumi had triple-digit annual recurring revenue growth, but not the exceptional growth investors expected from AI companies. A smaller seed extension was an option. The founders instead worried that insufficient capital would leave them unable to keep pace with AI development and widen the gap between their sales promises and product capabilities.
Ashqar is stepping back following the acquisition. He said the deal was not a blockbuster venture outcome, but would protect employees’ jobs and maintain service for Lumi’s customers. For Newforma, he described the purchase as a way to accelerate its AI work without building all the underlying technology internally.
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