AIAEC builds technology for the people who “design, develop and build the world,” says founder and CEO Ali Fakih. Founded in Arizona, the company helps architects, engineers, developers, construction teams and real estate professionals get clear zoning and regulatory answers faster, reducing time spent on manual research and avoiding costly delays early in development across complex, regulated environments. Its first product, ChatAEC, turns complex zoning and land use rules into source-backed, defensible answers in seconds, giving teams their time back to focus on real work.
“The idea for starting AIAEC came from years of working in the engineering and development industry,”Fakih says. “I saw how much time teams spent interpreting zoning codes, development standards, building regulations, and permitting requirements before moving forward with a project.” He founded the company in 2023, seeing AI advancing rapidly and convinced that professionals within their own industries needed to take the lead in building AI tools that reflect how their work actually gets done.
Each city organizes its regulatory information differently, and understanding them typically requires expertise from planners, engineers and land-use professionals. AIAEC addresses this by combining deep industry knowledge with strong product and AI engineering to structure this information in a way that ChatAEC can analyze and translate into clear, actionable insights. “Our goal is to turn a fragmented regulatory landscape into something developers, engineers, and cities can navigate far more efficiently.”
In developing Chat AEC, Fakih took to heart the advice to “focus on solving a specific industry bottleneck rather than building a generic technology platform.” In real estate and infrastructure development, significant delays occur when teams try to interpret zoning regulations, development standards, and compliance requirements before acquiring land or starting the permitting process. ChatAEC was built specifically to read and interpret these documents and provide clear answers quickly. The broader AIAEC platform is designed to help developers, engineers, and cities evaluate opportunities faster and move through the permitting process more efficiently.
“ChatAEC is AIAEC’s first launch and the first step toward a broader platform for the built-world workflow. Today, it focuses on zoning and early feasibility, but over time we are building additional tools to support more of the planning, design and delivery process.”
Photo courtesy of AIAIC
