Dillon Consulting partners with AXL venture studio

Dillon Consulting, a national engineering and environmental consulting firm, has partnered with AXL, a Toronto-based venture studio focused on building homegrown, AI-powered companies.

Under the collaboration, Dillon and AXL will co-develop AI solutions for engineering consulting workflows to make them faster, more consistent, and scalable.

“We see AI as a practical lever to strengthen how we deliver projects and services. Working with AXL allows us to pilot solutions in real-world contexts, refine them quickly, and scale what creates measurable value for our clients,” said Sean Hanlon, CEO of Dillon Consulting.

AXL says that most large-scale AI projects in the AEC sector face persistent barriers from factors including unclear objectives, fragmented data, and poor integration with processes.

Dillon will join AXL’s AI catalyst program, a corporate initiative that validates and scales AI applications. The engineering firm’s project delivery teams will contribute direct feedback and domain expertise to ensure solutions address industry challenges.

Dillon has approximately 1,100 employees across 25+ offices in Canada providing services in planning, management, engineering, and environmental science.

“Canada doesn’t have an innovation gap. It has a go-to-market gap. With Dillon delivering real feedback on client-side needs, we short-circuit inertia and build tools that matter, fast,” said Daniel Wigdor, co-founder and CEO of AXL.

AXL was founded in 2024 and earlier in this year closed an initial venture fund of $15 million, with Wigdor being the lead investor.

Wigdor sold his firm Chatham Labs to Meta in 2020 and afterwards served as founding director of Meta’s reality labs in Toronto. A professor of computer science at the University of Toronto, Wigdor has founded several companies and holds more than 60 patents.

AXL plans to build 50+ AI-driven companies over the next five years to improve Canada’s research-to-commercialization pipeline.

AXL earlier this year entered a strategic collaboration with RSM Canada, tapping the firm to serve as exclusive provider of accounting, tax, and consulting services.