Cascade, an AI startup helping architecture, engineering and construction firms find projects before they go to tender, has raised $3.5 million in a seed round led by Andreessen Horowitz Speedrun.
Co-founders Hannia Zia and Joana Ferreira built the company on a mix of big tech AI experience and childhoods spent around family construction businesses.
Its platform has already surfaced more than $10 billion worth of potential projects for clients working on sites including JFK Airport, LaGuardia, luxury hotels, nuclear facilities and data centres.
Hannia Zia and Joana Ferreira understood construction from opposite ends of the industry long before founding Cascade. Ferreira grew up in a Portuguese town built around construction and carpentry, while Zia watched her father’s construction business struggle to survive due to the difficulty of navigating procurement.
The two met while building AI systems at UnlikelyAI, the startup founded by William Tunstall-Pedoe, who played a key role in developing Amazon Alexa. Zia had led product teams at Google before becoming vice president of product at UnlikelyAI, while Ferreira built AI infrastructure after engineering roles spanning Google and one of the world’s largest trading platforms.
