--- title: AI Construction Startup Cascade Raises $3.5M to Predict Projects Before They Go to Bid description: Cascade, a New York AI startup, raised $3.5M led by a16z Speedrun to help construction firms spot projects before they go to bid. author: Darie Nani (Editor-in-Chief) updated: 2026-07-20T11:18:54.215Z canonical: https://www.sovereignmagazine.com/article/cascade-ai-construction-seed-funding image: https://cdn.nanimediahouse.com/cascade-founders.webp categories: Artificial Intelligence, Startups content_type: Spotlight region: New York City publication: Sovereign Magazine about: - type: Organization name: Cascade description: Cascade is a New York artificial-intelligence company that helps architecture, engineering and construction firms find and win building projects earlier. Its Pursuit Hub platform reads public signals such as bond filings, permits and capital plans to surface likely projects before they go out to bid. Founded by Google alumni Hannia Zia and Joana Ferreira, it is backed by Andreessen Horowitz's Speedrun program. url: https://usecascade.ai industry: Construction Technology sameAs: - https://www.linkedin.com/company/use-cascade/ --- Cascade, a New York startup that uses artificial intelligence to spot construction projects before they go out to bid, has raised $3.5 million in seed funding led by Andreessen Horowitz's Speedrun program. The round also drew in Ada Ventures, Blitzscaling Ventures, Indico Capital, shuckerVC, G2C Ventures and Snowball VC. Cascade sells to architecture, engineering and construction firms, the businesses that design and build airports, hospitals, data centers and power plants, and it is pitching a simple idea: the most valuable projects are often the ones a firm never hears about in time to compete. ## How Cascade Uses AI to Predict Construction Projects Before They Go to Bid Long before a request for proposals is issued, a large project leaves a paper trail. A bond is filed. A site changes hands. A line appears in a county capital plan for a building that does not exist yet. Cascade's platform, which it calls the Pursuit Hub, tracks those events across bond filings, permits, property transactions, earnings calls, budget announcements and meeting minutes, then links them to the work they signal: what is being planned, where, and which firms are placed to win it. ![Diagram of Cascade's AI network for the architecture, engineering and construction industry](https://cdn.nanimediahouse.com/cascade-network.webp) *Photo: Cascade* The comparison the founders reach for is finance. "Hedge funds look at a crazy amount of data to predict stock movements," said Joana Ferreira, co-founder and chief technology officer. "We use the same logic to predict construction projects." Once a likely project is spotted, the software scores it for how well it fits a firm's track record, then looks for a warm introduction through contacts the firm already holds in Outlook and other systems. The company says it has surfaced more than $10 billion in project opportunities for clients so far, among them firms whose work spans terminals at John F. Kennedy and LaGuardia airports, data centers and nuclear facilities. "Every firm we work with can point to a project they should have won but never even had a chance to see," said Hannia Zia, co-founder and chief executive. "Cascade is built around the bottom line: find the right work early, understand where you have a real advantage, and turn that into revenue delivered." One early customer, Tim Johannesson, a principal at the luxury architecture firm Smallwood, described finding a job that had started on his doorstep without his knowledge. "A project broke ground a few blocks away from me. I've been in the industry for 30 years, I didn't even know it was out for bid," he said. "Cascade has now helped us respond to and win more projects, including a recent $6M project, that I was only able to find through Cascade." ## Two Ex-Google Founders From Construction Families Zia and Ferreira are both former Google staff who met at [UnlikelyAI](https://www.unlikelyai.com/), the London company started by William Tunstall-Pedoe, whose earlier voice-assistant technology was bought by Amazon and became part of Alexa. At Google, Zia worked on the product team that scaled Google Pay in India, and she has appeared on the Forbes 30 Under 30 list; Ferreira built machine-learning systems for Google Search and was an early engineer at the British trading app Freetrade before leading the AI platform at UnlikelyAI. The route into construction was personal for both. Ferreira grew up in a Portuguese town built on construction and carpentry. Zia's father tried and failed to start a construction business. Their first customer, Munoz Engineering, came out of conversations Zia had with finance chiefs in New York, and a conference in Denver brought the next. ## Where Cascade Fits in Construction Bidding Software Firms already pay for construction bidding software and project-lead databases. Incumbents such as [Dodge Construction Network](https://www.construction.com/) and ConstructConnect sell access to large catalogues of public and private projects, and much of the industry still runs on relationships and manual research to decide which jobs to chase. Cascade's wager is that AI can move the work earlier, flagging projects while they are still forming rather than listing them once they are out to bid, and can match firms to one another to team up on larger jobs. That network effect is part of the sell to investors. "Construction is one of the largest markets in the world, and the way firms find and win work has barely changed in decades," said Marcus Segal, an investor at Andreessen Horowitz Speedrun. "Cascade starts with a painful revenue problem. That is a powerful wedge into how construction work gets pursued, partnered on and delivered." The company said the funding will be used to sign more customers and widen its network across the United States, matching firms to partners and to opportunities in new regions. More on the platform is at [Cascade](https://usecascade.ai/). **About Cascade** Cascade is a New York artificial-intelligence company that helps architecture, engineering and construction firms find and win building projects earlier. Its Pursuit Hub platform reads public signals such as bond filings, permits and capital plans to surface likely projects before they go out to bid. Founded by Google alumni Hannia Zia and Joana Ferreira, it is backed by Andreessen Horowitz's Speedrun program. [Website](https://usecascade.ai) ## FAQ **Q: How do construction firms find projects to bid on?** Most firms rely on relationships, referrals and paid project-lead databases or bid boards, then research each opportunity by hand to decide whether to pursue it. Cascade argues that approach surfaces work only once it is public, and uses AI to flag likely projects earlier, from signals such as bond filings, permits and capital plans. **Q: Can AI predict construction projects before they go to bid?** Cascade's platform is built to do exactly that, reading public signals that appear before a request for proposals is issued and linking them to the work they suggest is coming. The company says it has surfaced more than $10 billion in project opportunities for clients, though those figures are its own. **Q: What is an RFP in construction?** A request for proposals, or RFP, is the formal document a client issues to invite firms to bid on a project. By the time an RFP is public, many firms are competing for the same job, which is why Cascade focuses on the period before it is issued. **Q: Who invested in Cascade's seed round?** The $3.5 million round was led by Andreessen Horowitz Speedrun, with Ada Ventures, Blitzscaling Ventures, Indico Capital, shuckerVC, G2C Ventures and Snowball VC also taking part.