Construction technology is often divided into two camps: the flashy robots laying bricks on-site and the “unsexy” back-office software keeping the lights on. Attentive.ai firmly occupies the latter, and if their latest numbers are any indication, the back office is where the real money is being made.
The San Francisco-based startup today announced a significant expansion of Beam AI, its estimating platform designed to solve a problem that has plagued the industry for decades: the “takeoff.”
In construction parlance, a takeoff is the grueling process of opening a massive set of blueprints and manually counting every duct, pipe, and steel beam to figure out how much a job will cost. It is tedious, prone to human error, and, crucially, it is the ultimate bottleneck for growth.
“In construction, you can only win the bids you submit,” said Shiva Dhawan, co-founder and CEO of Attentive.ai. “We’re moving the industry from blueprint to bid in 24-72 hours , so contractors can take on more work without sacrificing accuracy.”
Solving the 2% Problem
The stakes of the manual takeoff are higher than they appear. A 2% error on a $10 million bid isn’t just a rounding error, it’s a $200,000 hole in the profit margin. Because of this risk, estimators often spend 4 to 8 hours on a single takeoff. For most contractors, this creates a hard ceiling on revenue; you can only grow as fast as your estimators can type into a spreadsheet.
Beam AI’s new expansion aims to shatter that ceiling. 10-minute automated takeoffs are now live for HVAC and mechanical, with plumbing and structural steel rolling out. . By using AI to read full plan sets and specifications, the platform extracts material quantities automatically, delivering estimate-ready data up to 90% faster than a human.
The Hybrid Model
While many AI startups promise fully autonomous workflows, Attentive.ai is taking a pragmatic, human-in-the-loop approach that resonates with the risk-averse construction industry.
Beam AI operates on a hybrid model. For projects where speed is king, the 10-minute AI takeoff handles the bulk of the work. For high-stakes, complex bids, the company offers a “done-for-you” service where the AI’s work is reviewed by human QA experts and delivered within 24 to 72 hours.
This strategy appears to be working. The company reports that over 1,200 contractors across the U.S. and Canada are now using the platform. To date, Beam AI has processed over 500,000 takeoffs, which the company claims has saved the industry more than 20 million hours of manual labor.
Expanding Beyond Estimating
The company is also beginning to move beyond takeoffs into bid management. New tools like Bid Dashboard and Bid Sniper give contractors a centralized view of incoming opportunities, allowing them to track bid status, deadlines, and project details in one place. By linking estimating with bid tracking, Attentive.ai is positioning Beam AI as a broader system for managing how contractors pursue and win work.
From IIT Delhi to the American Heartland
The pedigree behind Attentive.ai follows a classic Silicon Valley arc. Co-founders Shiva Dhawan and Rishabjit Singh are both engineers from the prestigious IIT Delhi. They entered the U.S. construction market during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, a time when contractors were forced to embrace remote estimation tools out of necessity.
What started as a tool for remote measurement has expanded into a broader AI platform for pre-construction workflows. The company’s growth is fueled by a Series B round backed by Insight Partners, a firm known for its bets on vertical SaaS giants.
The Bottom Line: Scaling the Trades
The real-world impact of the tech is most visible in the mid-market construction sector, where headcount is often the biggest barrier to scaling.
One example is Rays Stairs, who used Beam AI to double its bid volume, growing revenue from $900,000 to $2 million in just two months without hiring additional estimators. Similarly, Bommarito Construction reports submitting 8 additional bids per month, resulting in up to $1 million in top-line revenue.
As federal investment pours into megaprojects like data centers, chip manufacturing plants, and infrastructure, the demand for quick, accurate pricing is only going up. While the industry has historically been slow to digitize, the ROI of bidding 3x more jobs is an argument that even the most old-school contractor can’t ignore.
With a roadmap that covers all major construction trades, Attentive.ai isn’t just trying to build a tool; they are trying to become the operating system for how the physical world gets priced.
To learn more about the platform, visit ibeam.ai.
