- The Paris-based company Rayon has obtained €10 million in Series A funding, with Partech acting as the lead investor, bringing its total funding to €16 million.
- Since its launch, the browser-based design platform has created over four million drawings.
- The fourth version, which is due by the end of the year, will include advanced AI tools and 3D modelling in a single browser tab.
The book titled “Artificial Intelligence and Architecture,” currently used in university courses, was written by Stanislas Chaillou. Having spent many years examining the effect of AI on architecture in his writings, he finally decided to put his ideas into practice.
The browser tool Rayon, founded in 2021 in Paris by Chaillou and Bastien Dolla, has secured €10 million in Series A funding, with Partech as the lead investor, and is also receiving continued support from Northzone, Foundamental and Seedcamp, bringing its total funding to nearly €16 million.
The money raised will be used to develop a 3D mode, to add further AI features to the drawing process, and to expand the sales team.
Career background and industry experience
Chaillou was an architect and senior data scientist at Spacemaker, an AI design startup based in Oslo, which Autodesk acquired for $240 million in 2020 and subsequently incorporated into its Forma product. Dolla has experience in policy, having co-founded the French housing marketplace Habx and previously advising the French secretary of state for housing before switching to software.
They decided to address what Chaillou refers to as “the architecture of the 90%”: the interior fit-outs, the retail build-outs, and the home renovations which constitute the majority of construction projects but typically receive little attention from CAD vendors.
Rayon operates entirely in the browser and is designed as a lighter, faster alternative to conventional BIM tools. It combines floor plans, mood boards, specifications, and furniture schedules into a single file. Users can import DWG or PDF plans, which Rayon then converts into editable drawings.
The ‘Generate Plan’ tool can also be used with scanned or photographed floor plans. Specification sheets are updated automatically whenever changes are made, so manual updates are not necessary.
Competing with established industry leaders
Autodesk, Trimble, and Nemetschek are Rayon’s main competitors and together control about 42% of the interior design software market. A number of Rayon’s customers are shifting away from programs such as AutoCAD, SketchUp, and ArchiCAD. For example, Nolt Mathis, a design studio mentioned in the funding announcement, terminated its fifteen-year CAD subscription to switch to Rayon.
Far from being the only ones offering browser-based AI tools for this market, Snaptrude and Arcol are also targeting the same established companies in architecture and BIM, with Snaptrude backed by Foundamental. Gendo, based in London, has raised money to accelerate developments in architectural visualisation.
Partech has likewise invested in other design tools, for example, putting forward $3.4 million in seed funding to Modeinspect in January, a company that enables designers to edit live products in the same way that developers edit code.
Nevertheless, Rayon focuses more specifically on interior and experiential design and therefore targets areas where Autodesk’s tools are primarily designed for architects rather than interior design teams.
The money and the market
In 2026, the market for interior design software is worth about $6.5 billion and is expected to reach $9.7 billion by 2030, representing a compound annual growth rate of around 10%.
The €4 million seed financing, which took place in September 2023 and was jointly led by Northzone and Foundamental, follows a €1.7 million pre-seed round in 2022 that was led by Seedcamp. Among Seedcamp’s investors are architect Norman Foster and the co-founders of ArchDaily and PlanGrid. As a result of the seed financing, Rayon’s team has expanded to 40 people.
“What drew us to Rayon is how rare this kind of opportunity actually is. Interior design has been underserved by software for decades, and Rayon is the first team we’ve seen build the design layer this space actually needed rather than retrofitting tools made for architecture. Pairing that foundation with AI at this moment is a genuinely unique window, and we don’t expect it to stay open for long,” said Réza Malekzadeh, general partner at Partech, whose portfolio includes health insurer Alan and NFT marketplace Sorare.
Chaillou presents the drive towards using AI as something that is particular to his field rather than something taken from other areas, saying, “Interior design needs its own approach to AI, not a borrowed one. We’re building ours directly into the drawing experience, while staying connected to the AI tools designers already use.”
The results from customers support these claims: the hostel operator CityHub has saved €10,000 per month by conducting its feasibility studies in-house, and the interior firm Coloc Housing has reduced its feasibility costs by €11,000 per month by testing layouts before involving architects. Moreover, Virgin Atlantic uses Rayon in the design of its airport lounges.
What comes next
The company intends to launch Version 4 by the end of the year, including 3D modelling and a complete range of AI tools within a single browser tab. It remains uncertain whether this will be enough to win over architects and interior firms that have long used Autodesk and Trimble products, apart from those already seeking alternatives.
Now, Rayon has to demonstrate that it can achieve its vision.
