AECO Intelligence Archive

AI-powered quantity takeoff tools promise to eliminate the tedious manual work of counting objects in PDF drawings. Most deliver garbage results wrapped in ML hype. Kreo is different—after testing across…

Snaptrude promises "BIM in your browser"—no downloads, no installations, just open a URL and start modeling. After 3 days testing across residential, commercial, and urban planning scenarios, it's clear Snaptrude…

Procore Analytics launched in 2023 as a premium add-on promising "real-time project intelligence through AI-powered dashboards." After 30 days testing across three active projects (residential, commercial, infrastructure), we can confirm:…

Phone-based photogrammetry has evolved from "interesting gimmick" to "actually useful for site documentation" in just three years. We tested the two leading apps—Polycam and Epic Games' RealityScan—for 7 days across…

Trimble Connect positions itself as the platform-agnostic Common Data Environment for construction teams unwilling to lock into Autodesk or Bentley ecosystems. After 30 days testing IFC interoperability across Revit, ArchiCAD,…

Unity Reflect and Epic's Twinmotion represent competing visions for real-time architectural visualization. After 30 days testing both platforms across residential, commercial, and infrastructure projects, the winner depends entirely on your…

Full Content: Autodesk shipped IFC 4.3 export capability in Revit 2026, responding to European markets where the updated specification is increasingly mandated for public projects. After three weeks of testing…

We spent 30 days stress-testing Procore's new Analytics Dashboard across three active jobsites (residential, commercial, infrastructure). The promise? Real-time insights without data engineering. The reality? More nuanced. What We Tested:…

Procore Technologies went public in May 2024 at $67/share, raising $635M and valuing the company at $8.9B. Two years later, the stock trades at $161/share—up 140% from IPO price. By…

Israeli construction technology startup Buildots raised $60M Series C led by Lightspeed Venture Partners, with participation from Future Energy Ventures and existing investors. The round brings Buildots' total funding to…

San Francisco-based Doxel raised $35M Series B led by Insight Partners to scale its AI-powered construction progress monitoring platform. The company uses computer vision to analyze site photos—taken by drones,…

Canadian construction robotics startup Toggle announced a $45M Series B led by Foundry, with participation from Brick & Mortar Ventures and existing investors. The company manufactures robotic systems that automate…

San Francisco-based construction technology startup Malleable announced an $18M Series A led by Lightspeed Venture Partners, with participation from Canaan Partners and existing seed investor Craft Ventures. The company is…

Israeli startup Buildots closed a $60M Series C led by Lightspeed Venture Partners, with participation from existing investors Foundry and Millennium. The company uses computer vision and AI to automatically…

The most common reason AI tool pilots fail in AEC firms isn't the technology — it's misaligned workflow mapping. In our audits of 23 AI tools this year, we found…

Construction firms use 8-15 different software platforms on average: Procore for project management, Revit for BIM, QuickBooks for accounting, PlanGrid for field work, Sage for estimating, Excel for… everything else.…

Digital twins promise to revolutionize how construction projects are designed, built, and operated—creating real-time virtual replicas that mirror physical assets throughout their lifecycle. After analyzing 23 digital twin implementations across…

Common Data Environments are the construction industry's $2 million mistake that nobody admits making. Between 2021-2025, we tracked 47 CDE implementations across firms ranging from 50 to 2,000 employees. Twenty-eight…

ESRI released ArcGIS Pro 3.5 with native Revit file import, IFC 4.3 support, and two-way synchronization with BIM 360/Construction Cloud—the first ESRI product to genuinely bridge the GIS-BIM divide for…

Trimble sent customer emails February 10, 2026 announcing 15% price increase across all AEC software products effective April 1, 2026—just 50 days notice. This is the first major pricing adjustment…

Bentley Systems acquired New Zealand-based Seequent for $900M cash, the largest acquisition in Bentley's history and a clear signal of their infrastructure and mining market ambitions. Seequent's subsurface modeling software…

At Groundbreak 2026, Procore unveiled its Enterprise AI Suite—a collection of AI-powered features promising to transform construction project management through predictive analytics, automated documentation, and intelligent decision support. The announcement…

Autodesk announced Platform Services API 2.0 will deprecate v1 endpoints on June 1, 2026—four months from today. All integrations currently using v1 authentication, data access, or webhooks will stop working…

Procore Technologies quietly acquired three construction technology startups in Q1 2026, spending an estimated $40-60M combined for capabilities the company apparently couldn't build internally fast enough. The acquisitions—BidTracer (procurement AI),…

Most clients commissioning "net zero buildings" in 2026 are buying something significantly less ambitious than they believe. The gap between marketing language and technical compliance is wide — and getting…

Planning-stage energy models are almost always wrong. Not slightly wrong — routinely 40-60% off actual energy consumption once a building is occupied. The industry knows this, accepts it, and keeps…

Two firms assess the same concrete frame. One reports 320 kgCO₂e/m². The other reports 410 kgCO₂e/m². Same building, same spec, different tools — and both claim to be right. This…

There are now over 40 construction supply chain platforms promising real-time material tracking, supplier visibility, and procurement automation. Most contractors are using zero of them — and for legitimate reasons.…

Concrete 3D printing has generated more architectural renders than completed buildings. That's changing — but slowly, and not in the way most vendors want you to believe. What's genuinely production-ready:…

Design for Manufacture and Assembly promises 30-40% schedule reductions. In practice, most projects abandon DfMA principles by week three of design development — not because the concept fails, but because…

Autodesk has increased AEC Collection pricing by an average of 8-12% annually since 2022. Enterprise agreements signed before Q3 each year have historically locked in current pricing for 24-36 months.…

The most common reason AI tool pilots fail in AEC firms isn't the technology — it's misaligned workflow mapping. In our audits of 23 AI tools this year, we found…

We spent 30 days stress-testing Procore's new Analytics Dashboard across three active jobsites (residential, commercial, infrastructure). The promise? Real-time insights without data engineering. The reality? More nuanced. What We Tested:…