P- 1 AI Raises 23 Million to Train the First Engineering Superintelligence

“I want an AI superintelligence that can build us starships and Dyson spheres,” said Paul Eremenko, former CTO of Airbus and co-founder of the newly launched P-1 AI. While that ambition may still be decades away, Eremenko and his team are taking a measured first step toward it: building AI tools that can assist engineers in designing complex real-world machines.

P-1 AI, which has just emerged from stealth mode, was founded by Eremenko, former Google DeepMind researcher Aleksa Gordić, and Adam Nagel, previously an engineering leader at Acubed, Airbus’s innovation center. The company announced a $23 million seed funding round led by Radical Ventures, joined by Village Global, Schematic Ventures, and Lerer Hippeau, alongside angel investors including Google DeepMind’s Chief Scientist Jeff Dean and OpenAI’s VP of New Product Explorations Peter Welinder.

P-1’s first product, Archie, is an AI-powered engineering agent designed to operate like a junior member of an engineering team. Rather than replacing traditional tools or software, Archie aims to handle repetitive and time-intensive cognitive tasks: distilling design requirements, generating early design concepts, checking compliance against regulations, conducting first-order design trades, and selecting appropriate tools for detailed work.

The startup’s name is inspired by The Adolescence of P-1, a 1977 science fiction novel about a sentient AI. Yet the company's path is grounded in a pragmatic roadmap, not science fiction. “We’re not going to be a 10-year moonshot,” said Eremenko. “This is a very pragmatic rollout and path to market.”