Bombardier Taps CoLab to Embed AI Into Jet Design and Manufacturing
Bombardier Inc. has signed a multiyear, multimillion-dollar contract with CoLab AI Inc. to deploy artificial intelligence across its business jet design and manufacturing operations. The agreement will help the Canadian aerospace manufacturer accelerate product development cycles and integrate AI-driven capabilities into existing engineering workflows.
CoLab's platform captures knowledge that typically gets lost after projects end. When engineering teams complete a program, they conduct retrospectives to document lessons learned. CoLab automates this capture process, then uses machine learning to surface those lessons when engineers face similar decisions on future projects.
The system works by codifying expertise from experienced engineers-their understanding of customer needs and technical tradeoffs-and making that knowledge available across teams in real time. Engineers can then apply this institutional knowledge automatically to improve design quality without manually searching through past projects.
Eric Filion, Executive Vice President of Programs and Supply Chain at Bombardier, said the integration "will further strengthen our ability to deliver world-class business jets for our customers and will enable our teams to make engineering decisions based on vast amounts of data in real time."
CoLab CEO Adam Keating framed the deal as a competitive necessity. "Eventually, everyone is going to be using AI," he said. "So the question executive teams have for us is: how do we adopt AI in a way that our competitors can't replicate?"
For product development teams, the answer often comes down to whether an AI system can actually capture and scale the knowledge your best engineers already possess. AI for Product Development requires connecting people, data, and tools in a way that makes expertise reusable across projects.
CoLab, founded in 2017, builds software specifically for mechanical engineering and hardware development teams. Its EngineeringOS platform integrates AI agents directly into the design workflow, allowing teams to make faster decisions without leaving their existing tools.
The contract represents another step in Bombardier's broader AI adoption strategy within its engineering organization.
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