About ShapeDiver
ShapeDiver started in Vienna in 2015, when three mathematicians who spent their days automating CAD for building projects decided that a Grasshopper definition should be usable by anyone with a browser. We’re still a small team, and many of us still write Grasshopper definitions every day.
How it started
In 2015, Alex, Mathias, and Mathieu worked together at Evolute, a Vienna consultancy that solved geometry problems on large building projects for façade contractors, construction companies, and architecture offices around the world. All mathematicians by training, we specialized in the geometric optimization of building envelopes, and much of the work involved automating CAD: on projects with tens of thousands of unique building components, we generated manufacturing drawings and CAM data for the machines.
Through that work, and at industry events, we watched Grasshopper spread well beyond architecture: into furniture, jewelry, industrial parts, and orthotics. The reason seemed clear to us: Grasshopper lets an expert in almost any field put their own subject-matter knowledge into an automated design tool without learning to code.
We also saw where it stopped. Manufacturers could produce unique, batch-size-one products at scale, but they struggled to generate the data for each order, or to show their customers what was possible. Parametric models were used in one of two ways:
Our idea was to let customers use the parametric model directly: more choice for them, fewer transcription errors, and orders that process themselves. In late 2015 we started running Grasshopper on servers and building the tools to drive it from a web browser. After a year of evenings and weekends, we opened a public beta in 2016 and launched the first commercial version of ShapeDiver in early 2017.
What we believe
Computational designers are often treated as engineers who can’t quite code. We think that gets it backwards. A computational designer who knows furniture, orthotics, or structural engineering can encode that knowledge in Grasshopper faster and more accurately than a software team can reverse-engineer it. What they usually lack is a way to get their tools in front of the people who need them - so they end up running those tools for everyone else.
We work on that problem. ShapeDiver runs your Grasshopper definitions in the cloud and turns them into apps that colleagues, customers, and machines can use: from web configurators and internal engineering tools to shop drawings, 3D-printing files, CNC code, and ERP exports. You keep building in Grasshopper; we handle the servers, the scaling, and the security.
How ShapeDiver worksHistory
ShapeDiver is founded in Vienna. The first prototype runs Grasshopper on a server and takes its parameters from a browser.
We win a startup competition run by the City of Vienna, and open the public beta in September.
The first commercial version of ShapeDiver goes live.
Our first engineers join: Michael Oppitz starts on the 3D viewer, and Edwin Hernández on Grasshopper development. Both are still here.
We receive an investment from TTWiiN, which is associated with the engineering firm Thornton Tomasetti, and Thornton Tomasetti’s Grasshopper platform, Swarm, is merged into ShapeDiver. That partnership brought us into engineering firms, where computational designers build tools for hundreds of colleagues.
We relaunch the platform, rebuilt from the ground up on what we learned in the first five years.
App Builder lets you build a complete web app, user interface included, in Grasshopper, without a web developer.
We release the Shopify app and Speckle connector.
We complete our SOC 2® Type II examination. The ShapeDiver Viewer becomes open source, and we preview an AI agent for App Builder.
The team
We’re a small team: a core group in Vienna, and colleagues who work remotely, from as far away as India. Several of us have been here since 2018, and the people who build the platform also help customers build on it, so when you talk to us, you usually talk to someone who knows the code or the Grasshopper definition behind your question.
Computational Designer
With us since 2025
Agnieszka works on our professional services projects, often from the first call to the finished app. She maps how a customer works today, writes the specification, builds the configurator in Grasshopper, and stays with the project through launch, whether the result is a jewelry configurator in an online store or a tool that sends geometry straight to a manufacturing machine.
Co-founder & CTO
With us since 2015
Alex designed the technology ShapeDiver runs on. Before he studied applied mathematics, he spent eight years in customer support and DevOps for a European provider of fleet management systems for taxis - useful training for running a cloud service. After graduating, he led Evolute for almost a decade, developing computational solutions to hard geometry problems on large building projects with firms such as Zaha Hadid Architects and Snøhetta. He has been automating CAD processes for about 20 years.
Product Owner, Grasshopper Plug-in
With us since 2018
Edwin ran his own business building 3D configurators with other technologies, until he couldn't build the configurators he wanted with them. He joined ShapeDiver in 2018 and has since become one of the most experienced Grasshopper developers we know. For years he built and optimized models for customers' configurators and automation workflows, and trained their teams to do the same. In 2026 he moved from mostly hands-on project work to owning and developing our Grasshopper plug-in, so everything he learned on those projects now goes into the tool every ShapeDiver user works with.
Co-founder & CEO
With us since 2015
Mathias studied applied mathematics and worked as a consultant and plug-in developer at Evolute before co-founding ShapeDiver. As CEO he also looks after finance and operations, and he has kept the core team together through good and lean years. Outside ShapeDiver, he is a proud husband and father of two, and an officer in the Austrian military reserves.
Co-founder & Head of Product
With us since 2015
Mathieu is a mathematician and co-founder, and he decides what ShapeDiver builds next. That mostly means choosing from a steady stream of good ideas (from customers, partners, and the team) and turning the platform, the Grasshopper plug-in, App Builder, and the Viewer into one consistent product. In the early years he also helped some of our first customers build their first models.
Senior Software Engineer
With us since 2020
Matthias is responsible for the backend infrastructure: the part of ShapeDiver that runs Grasshopper definitions in the cloud, scales up when traffic spikes, and keeps going while we deploy updates. Most users never see his work, which is the point.
Senior Software Engineer
With us since 2018
Michael joined ShapeDiver straight from university in 2018 and built the ShapeDiver Viewer from scratch. It now powers thousands of apps, from engineering automation tools to e-commerce configurators and scan-to-print applications, and since 2026 it's open source. He also explains new viewer and App Builder features in our posts and tutorials.
Computational Designer
With us since 2025
Sakshi builds configurators and design tools for our professional services customers, and manages projects from the first Grasshopper model to handover - recently for makers of shading systems and industrial appliances. She works from India.
How we work
We’re a small, high-trust team. Everyone is expected to make decisions in their own area and to say so when they think we’re getting something wrong. People work from wherever suits them, and the Vienna team meets at the office once a week. We build the product and use it: our computational designers ship customer projects on the same platform you use, so the rough edges reach the people who can fix them quickly.
Partners and investors
ShapeDiver is built on Rhinoceros 3D and Grasshopper by Robert McNeel & Associates. Our investor is TTWiiN, which is associated with Thornton Tomasetti, whose CORE studio helped shape how engineering firms use the platform. We also work with integration partners (Speckle, Skema, iJewel3D, Autodesk Forma, and Shopify) and with consultants who build on ShapeDiver for their own clients.
Careers
We don’t hire often, and when we do, the roles are listed on our careers page.
See careersContact
ShapeDiver GmbH, Am Heumarkt 4, 1030 Vienna, Austria
About ShapeDiver
Upload a Grasshopper definition and see it running in a browser within minutes. Start a free trial, or talk to us if you’d like help deciding whether ShapeDiver fits your project.