The BuiltWorlds 2025 AI/ML Conference Demo Day Competition featured seven promising AEC startups, each with a novel, industry-specific innovation that was pitched to a captivated audience and panel of active investor judges. In the end, it was ConeLabs that came out on top, impressing the judges with its AI-powered inspection solution.
Still, while ConeLabs was the ultimate winner of our annual AI/ML Conference Demo Day, it was not the only compelling pitch. In fact, each of the seven companies featured—including Genia, mbue, Sabana, GanttAI, Struct.digital and Modalina AI—offered something unique with their solution, many of which promise to alleviate a specific industry pain point through AI and improve some aspect of operations through improved data collection, management and/or analysis. These startups represent the leading edge of emerging tech in AI, which is why we decided to share a little bit more information about each one.
ConeLabs
ConeLabs is reimagining inspection services by utilizing advanced drone technology and cutting-edge AI solutions. Its high-resolution 3D models and AI-powered analysis offer actionable insights to help clients plan and execute building maintenance with improved precision.
In his pitch, ConeLabs Co-Founder and CEO Albert Mansour explained how the company’s solution automates issue detection and eliminates manual, time-consuming and often dangerous tasks. Its automated reports equip clients with the data needed to optimize resources and mitigate risks effectively when conducting superstructure maintenance.
ConeLabs’ vision is to harness the power of artificial intelligence to process massive 3D models. The company hopes to change how inspection is done, requiring nothing more than imagery and allowing users to see the structural health of an asset in a single click.
“This demo competition was significant for all of us at ConeLabs,” Mansour reflected. “ It’s one thing to be recognized by a mixed audience or a group of investors, but to be selected as the winning technology in a room of our industry’s innovation leaders in AI/ML is special.”
Mansour sees this win as an “important validation” to his team, adding, “We are excited to keep pushing the boundaries and delivering a solution that makes a real impact.”
Genia
Founded by seasoned civil and software engineers, Genia uses AI to generate optimal engineering drawings for construction in minutes.
Genia started off in 2023 supporting timber structures in Vancouver and has since expanded to support building codes in Canada and the US. The team is working to cover additional use cases beyond new builds, such as value engineering and adaptive reuse. In late May, the startup plans to roll out additional support for low- to mid-rise concrete structures.
Genia is already being utilized by Suffolk Design for a number of adaptive reuse projects, and was awarded the People’s Choice Award at Suffolk’s Boost 5 Demo Day in November 2024.
Notably, Genia has joined PermitFlow on their ReconstructLA Initiative, supporting the local builders and developers rebuilding Los Angeles in the wake of devastating wildfires. Genia’s solution allows structural engineers to quickly produce quality drawings based on the latest Californian Building Codes, expediting the design review process as workers push to rebuild over 11,000 properties destroyed in the fires.
mbue
mbue offers automated, AI-powered QA/QC in architectural review. Founder and CEO Jean-Pierre Trou, a licensed architect, emphasized how mbue’s AI models help architects and engineers make better design decisions faster, enhancing efficiency and reducing liability in architectural drawings and construction documentation.
“Our technology is already making a tangible difference in the industry,” shared Trou, recounting an instance where mbue caught a single-digit change on a mechanical schedule that saved a customer over $100k.
“It was a $7,000 component that the entire team had overlooked,” Trou said. “If it hadn’t been caught, they would have had to absorb the six-figure cost.”
Sabana
Sabana, a startup specializing in materials optimization, recently introduced its AI-driven procurement platform that can predict supply chain disruptions with the aim of helping construction firms source materials more efficiently. Sabana allows users to accelerate their product research and construction specifications, saving an estimated eight hours a week, according to the company.
Sabana launched in 2024 out of the Swartz Center for Entrepreneurship at Carnegie Mellon. The company is currently focused on refining its minimum viable product to ensure it truly meets the needs of architects and engineers. Sabana will be rolling out V2 by the end of May, which will introduce new, key capabilities like indexing, AI-powered querying and enhanced collaboration tools.
GanttAI
GanttAI is helping to bring AI-powered scheduling intelligence to the industry’s forefront, demonstrating how its platform automates project scheduling and mitigates delays by analyzing past construction timelines and providing proactive insights. Gantt AI automatically generates detailed, professional Gantt charts—complete with task dependencies, milestones and timelines—in seconds.
Earlier in his career, GanttAI Founder Chirag Soni worked in construction management, which is where he first witnessed the industry’s problems with schedule building. His previous team used weights based on project size, cost, location and complexity to come up with scaling factors for each phase of the project to estimate durations more systematically. According to Chirag, the idea stuck.
Years later, Chirag began connecting his old team’s methods with advancements in machine learning and, as he said, “things just clicked.”
“That is what led to GanttAI,” Chirag explained. “The goal was to create something that could automate the heavy lifting, learn from past projects and generate reliable, tailored schedules in a fraction of the time.”
Struct.digital
Struct.digital is a young, bootstrapped startup that provides custom software solutions through struct.answer, an AI-based document analysis tool. By extracting critical insights from construction documents, struct.answer aims to streamline workflows and reduce legal risks.
Companies are using struct.answer not just to retrieve answers but also to gain insights from historical data, generate reports based on past templates, and assist with knowledge transfer.
One company, according to the Founder Manoj Bala, uses the software to onboard new engineers—allowing them to ask questions about past and current projects and get immediate, context-rich responses.
Modalina AI
Modalina AI, a vision AI agent, looks to tackle avoidable rework loss by transforming visual data into actionable insights that can automate jobsites with artificial intelligence.
“As an AI engineer, I love solving problems in computer vision with AI,” Folley said. “My first startup was AI drones for progress tracking, and I noticed that the main problem was that the construction companies have problems using the data they collect. Thus, I conducted ~40-45 customer discoveries and validated the problem that site managers and superintendents are overwhelmed by unstructured visual data.”
Modalina AI is currently working on initial pilots, according to Founder Egor Folley, that are already illustrating the software’s potential to enhance efficiencies. Once visuals are uploaded into the platform, an AI agent can extract valuable insights from it for site analysis, quality control, and site logistics.
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