The construction industry faces mounting pressure as large infrastructure, industrial, and data centre projects accelerate across the U.S. Despite rapid advances in technology elsewhere, many preconstruction teams still rely heavily on manual takeoffs and spreadsheets, creating time-consuming bottlenecks and limiting bidding capacity.
San Francisco-based Attentive.ai addresses this challenge with Beam AI, an AI-powered takeoff platform that fully automates quantity takeoffs across major construction trades. Trusted by over 1,100 contractors and suppliers, Beam AI significantly reduces manual labour while increasing bid volume and accuracy.
The company’s recent $30.5 million Series B funding round, led by Insight Partners with participation from Vertex Ventures, Tenacity Ventures, and InfoEdge Venture Fund, brings total funding to $48 million. This capital will accelerate AI model development, expand the product beyond takeoffs into estimating and bidding workflows, and support international growth.
“Our mission is to be the most trusted preconstruction platform. With this funding, we’ll accelerate our AI model development and expand beyond takeoffs into estimating, bidding, and collaboration, building the foundation for the next decade of construction growth,” said Shiva Dhawan, co-founder and CEO of Attentive.ai.
Bringing AI into construction estimating
Attentive.ai was co-founded by Shiva Dhawan, who serves as CEO and leads the company’s vision to transform preconstruction workflows. He told TFN, ” In its early days, the team built computer vision and AI models for CCTV surveillance and later for satellite imagery, projects that proved their technical capabilities but revealed a deeper truth: AI’s real potential lay in industries where manual, repetitive work still dictated progress.
That realisation came into focus through the company’s early work automating property measurements for landscaping and maintenance businesses. Working closely with these customers, the team discovered a far larger challenge hiding in plain sight: construction estimating and takeoffs.
That insight became the turning point. The team pivoted to build Beam AI, its 100% automated takeoff platform designed to automate the most time-intensive part of preconstruction, so estimators could focus on pricing, coordination, and winning more work.”
Beam AI leverages a human-in-the-loop model that integrates AI precision with expert quality assurance, ensuring 100% automated takeoffs with minimal errors. Core features include full automation of takeoffs across diverse construction trades, time savings of up to 90%, and integration with bid tracking and collaboration tools for seamless workflow management, as well as a mobile application for onsite progress tracking and geotagging.
Dhawan explained, “Unlike AI-assisted tools that still require users to click, trace, and label drawings, the platform produces ready-to-use material quantities and assemblies within 24–72 hours, called ‘outcomes as a service.” Each output goes through a human QA layer to ensure field accuracy, giving estimators confidence to use the platform’s outputs directly for pricing, quoting, or importing into estimating systems. This combination of AI + human expertise makes Attentive.ai the only platform that scales automation without sacrificing trust in results.”
He added, “What sets it apart is automation you can rely on to increase project pipeline and drive revenue. Rays Stairs Inc. doubled its bid volume and scaled revenue from $900K to $2M within two months, saving 18 hours per week. Bommarito Construction submitted 50 more bids in six months and increased revenue by $1M.”
What’s next?
With its latest funding, Attentive.ai plans to deepen Beam AI’s core intelligence and develop new AI-powered solutions covering the entire preconstruction lifecycle, including estimating, bidding, and collaboration features.
The company also aims to expand its global presence to meet increasing demand driven by large-scale construction projects worldwide. Its goal is to build the foundational platform that enables the next decade of growth in construction through AI innovation.
Dhawan concluded, “The long-term vision is to make AI the backbone of preconstruction, helping contractors bid smarter, faster, and with higher confidence, across every trade and every job.”
“Attentive has established itself as a clear category leader in AI-driven construction takeoffs. Its combination of advanced AI with human-in-the-loop QA delivers immediate ROI—helping customers save time, bid faster, win more projects, and boost productivity. What truly stands out is the team’s product vision, customer-centric approach, and strong founder leadership,” said Nikitas Koutoupes, Managing Director at Insight Partners.
