CoLab today announced CoLab 4.0, the company’s biggest platform step-change of 2026, bundling new collaboration and design tools, a desktop application, redesigned navigation, AI capabilities, and enterprise integrations into one major release. Together, they represent CoLab’s clearest statement yet on what AI in engineering should actually look like.
CoLab’s customers design some of the most complex products in the world: nuclear reactors, jet engines, and medical devices. Integrating AI into engineering programs like these takes careful consideration:
“Our customers design mission-critical products, where design decisions have real world consequences. They’re excited about AI, but they must adopt it in a way that preserves human judgment when the stakes are high,” says Adam Keating, Co-founder and CEO of CoLab. “That’s why we’re building AI for engineering that prioritizes the decision making experience for human subject matter experts, while accelerating decision velocity.”
CoLab 4.0 combines 2 major AI releases with 13 capabilities aimed at human decision makers. Together, these capabilities allow engineering teams to capture and preserve expert knowledge, then activate that knowledge with AI. Every organization has deep expertise, but it’s scattered: issue-tracking spreadsheets and PowerPoint decks from formal reviews, early design whiteboarding sessions, notes from testing that never make it back to the record. For nearly 10 years, CoLab has been transforming how teams run model and drawing reviews, capturing issues raised in the process. Now, 4.0 extends the platform to capture more design rationale with collaborative whiteboarding via Canvas, rich text documents via Notebooks, and video support, including timestamped commenting. Design context captured via these new tools informs AI agents working alongside engineering teams.
4.0 advances CoLab’s AI capabilities on two distinct fronts. AutoReview 2.0, CoLab’s proactive AI peer checker, delivers faster results and broader check coverage across dimensions, tolerancing, GD&T, and BOM consistency. It also introduces 3D manufacturability checks for machining, sheet metal, and injection molding, with additional specialized checks coming later this year. Operator, now in early access, is CoLab’s new conversational AI interface, where engineers can perform targeted analysis, surface design solutions from past programs, and orchestrate design and review cycles.
“AutoReview acts as a first pass check on designs, applying your organization’s standards, checklists, and lessons learned. Operator works from the same knowledge base, conversationally,” says Jeremy Andrews, Co-founder and CTO of CoLab. “This represents two modes of making your organization’s expertise accessible in real time. AutoReview performs deep analysis, while Operator provides coverage that’s quick and wide.”
Operator extends beyond basic chat and search by tapping into specialized agents that understand engineering designs and can take actions within CoLab. Later this year, CoLab plans to release integrations for Operator, allowing engineers to take actions in other tools, such as simulation software, as well.
CoLab 4.0 also includes out of the box integrations with PTC Creo and Siemens NX, letting engineers push designs from their CAD session directly into CoLab without exporting or leaving the tool. For CoLab, these integrations are part of a larger direction:
“What we’re building toward is a single, decision-centric interface that brings together every piece of product data and knowledge data that shapes an engineering program — your CAD, your standards, your expert feedback, your lessons learned,” says Keating. “4.0 is the foundation, and we’re making big bets on user experience and integrations to make it the best, most connected interface possible.”
CoLab plans to announce additional key partnerships and integrations throughout Summer and Fall 2026.
About CoLab
CoLab builds AI-powered software for mechanical engineering and hardware development teams. Its EngineeringOS platform helps engineers make better, faster design decisions by connecting people, data, and AI in one collaborative workspace—capturing expert knowledge as a natural part of day-to-day work.
With AI agents built into the platform, CoLab enables teams to apply that knowledge automatically to improve design quality and accelerate product development. Founded in 2017, CoLab is trusted by leading global manufacturers to drive decision velocity and bring better products to market, faster.
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