Newforma Acquires Lumi AI and Sets Its Standard for AI Answers on Project Data

Acquisition provides one view into every source of project data, delivering the context needed for reliable answers

BOSTON, Oct. 21, 2026 /PRNewswire/ -- Newforma, the leading project and information management company for architecture, engineering, construction and owner (AECO) firms, today announced it has acquired Lumi AI, a Toronto company whose analytics engine turns plain-language questions into accurate, explainable answers.

According to Newforma, AI used to inform project decisions should meet three tests. Answers must be explainable, so the reasoning is visible. They must be verifiable against the source data, so they can be checked. And they must be accurate enough to act on, because on a live project a decision carries liability. Lumi built its engine around those tests. It asks clarifying questions when a prompt is vague, shows the logic behind every answer, and proactively flags data quality problems when it finds them.

Architecture and engineering firms hold years of project history in their systems: issues, RFIs, submittals and model coordination records. Not all firms have dedicated business intelligence teams. That data answers a question only when someone stops and builds a report, leaving much of the available data underused.

"A lot of companies are telling this industry their AI is better," said Peter Cannone, CEO of Newforma. "We'd rather say out loud what better means and be measured against it. Explainable, verifiable, accurate enough to act on when liability is on the line. Our customers don't need another AI that sounds confident, they need answers they can verify. Pairing Lumi's engine with the deepest project data structure in AECO is how we set the standard rather than join the chorus. Everyone in this industry wants to be your single source of truth. We would rather be the single view into all of them."

Project teams often rely on technology from multiple vendors. Project information sits across design tools, CA trackers, document systems, email, Teams messages and the field, and a firm's real history spans all of it. Every vendor in this industry offers to be the single source of truth, which asks a firm to move its work into one place and leave the rest behind. Newforma's position is the opposite. Newforma is the single view into all of the sources of truth a project already has, and Lumi's agentic layer is what lets a question reach across them and come back with an answer that can be checked. That is what gives an answer true context. By drawing on multiple systems, Newforma aims to provide a more complete picture of project information.

Lumi's engine builds a semantic layer over the operational systems it reads, so it works from what the data means rather than only where it lives. That semantic and clarification layer, developed over three years, supports the engine's ability to deliver explainable, verifiable and accurate answers.

The engine will initially be integrated into Newforma platforms, drawing on more than 20 years of AECO project data structure, including issues, RFIs, submittals and communication history. An RFI is not a generic ticket, a submittal cycle has a shape, and a coordination issue means something specific. That structure provides the context needed to generate reliable answers for construction-related decisions. The result is insight nobody has to go looking for. Newforma Konekt will surface which consultant is slowing RFI turnaround, which project's issue pattern matches one that went wrong before, and where a submittal cycle is drifting from a firm's own baseline. Grounded in the firm's data, with the reasoning shown.

"We started Lumi to redefine how people interact with their own data: to make it as simple as asking a question," said Ibrahim Ashqar, co-founder and CEO of Lumi AI. "Newforma brings rich project data and a large base of firms who depend on it. Combining that with Lumi's engine unlocks far greater value for a much wider audience."

Tudor Boiangiu, co-founder and CTO of Lumi AI, joins Newforma as VP of AI Engineering, with the Lumi engineering team continuing to build from Toronto. Lumi's agentic layer will extend Vojo, the AI assistant Newforma introduced at Newforma World 2026 in May. Vojo runs on Newforma's agentic framework, with planned capabilities including natural language search and cross-project queries across project data. Lumi adds the analytics layer that turns those questions into verifiable answers in Newforma Konekt's smart project dashboards, with rollout details to follow.

"We spent three years building an engine that asks instead of guessing," said Tudor Boiangiu, Newforma VP of AI Engineering. "That work is worth nothing without data that already means something, and Newforma has 20 years of it. They had also already committed to AI and built the framework to carry it. So, I am not here to convince anyone this matters. I am here to build it."

The first work is in workflows where an answer can be checked against the project record the firm already knows to be true. Newforma will widen the scope from there. For more information about Newforma's solutions, visit www.newforma.com/.

Terms of the transaction were not disclosed.

About Newforma 
Newforma, an Ethos Capital company, is the leader in Project and Information Management for the architecture, engineering, construction, and owner (AECO) industry. For over 20 years, we have empowered professionals to enhance productivity and efficiency by connecting them to vital project information across more than 20 million projects globally. Our solutions, available both on-premises and cloud-hosted, facilitate knowledge transfer and ensure clarity, enabling effective collaboration, quality assurance, and improved productivity and profitability. Trusted by over 4.5 million users, Newforma has supported more than 24 million file transfers, 6 million submittals, and 1 billion emails, providing a comprehensive project record at your fingertips and eliminating the headaches of searching for critical information.

About Lumi AI 
Founded in 2023 in Toronto, Lumi's agentic analytics platform connects to all your data sources, automatically builds your context layer, and proactively surfaces the opportunities hiding in your data. Mid- to-large F100 enterprise clients using Lumi uncovered multi-million-dollar opportunities hidden in inventory, sales, and procurement datasets.

SOURCE Newforma