AI Companies Are Offering Architects Six Figures for Their CAD Files

AI companies buying architecture CAD files are now approaching architecture and other AEC firms with offers of money in return for access to their private data. Tech companies want to build AI models and agents that can perform AEC tasks, such as reviewing drawings and writing RFI responses, and they need examples of how design work is actually done. Firms that hold years of completed project records have become the target of those requests.

The offers came to wider attention through a LinkedIn post by USC adjunct professor Simon Ha, who shared a screenshot of a social media post by a company called Nyne.ai. The company describes itself as “the data factory for AI,” and its post read, “You’ve got 3 years of CAD files doing nothing. We’ll pay you six figures for them.” Ha asked fellow architects whether they had seen it, noting that the offer covers CAD files “including revisions and markups, to train AI models on how design work gets done.”

Ha used the same post to question whether firms have the right to make such sales. “This raises serious questions about copyright and ownership of instruments of service,” he wrote, using the term for the drawings and documents an architect produces for a client. “Just because a firm possesses these files doesn’t necessarily mean it has the right to sell them for AI training. Removing client names doesn’t necessarily resolve those issues.” His concern is that anonymizing a file does not settle who actually owns the work inside it.

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Nyne.ai is not the only company in the market. As tech firms keep looking for uses of generative AI, several platforms have appeared that offer to act as brokers between AEC firms and AI developers. One broker tells prospective sellers that “if you run a general contractor, an architecture practice, a design-build firm or a specialty contractor, the models, drawings and project records your firm has built up over years of completed work are what AI labs want their models to learn from.” The same broker adds, “Buyers tell us they’re asking for CAD and project files from construction and architecture right now, and few firms know their archive is worth anything.”

Another broker explains why design files have become so sought after. “Text and code were online for anyone to train on,” it writes. “Design files never were. A drawing set, a Revit model or a SolidWorks assembly lives on a firm’s own server.” The broker adds that Fast Company reported in August 2026 that the drawings and 3D models that could train an architecture model sit in individual firms’ servers and filing cabinets, and it says that scarcity is why CAD has become one of the file types AI data buyers now ask for by name.

For architects, the question is practical as much as legal, since the files being requested include revisions and markups that record the decisions behind each drawing. A firm that agrees to sell would be handing over that working history, while the ownership questions Ha raised remain open. The original report invites architects who have been approached by brokers or tech companies to share their experiences in the comments.