Cascade raises $3.5M to help construction firms predict the future and win more projects
Cascade's customers, firms building JFK, LaGuardia, luxury hotels and nuclear facilities, have used the platform to surface more than $10B in project opportunities.
New York City, NY, July 21, 2026 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- In construction, the most expensive projects are the ones a firm never sees. Somewhere right now, a bond has been filed, a site has changed hands, and the winner of a nine-figure project is already being decided, months before an RFP exists. Cascade, the AI pursuit platform for architecture, engineering and construction (AEC) firms, is changing that. Today, the company announced it has raised $3.5 million from Andreessen Horowitz Speedrun, Ada Ventures, Blitzscaling Ventures, Indico Capital, shuckerVC, G2C Ventures and Snowball VC.
"Every firm we work with can point to a project they should have won but never even had a chance to see," said Hannia Zia, co-founder and CEO of Cascade. "Cascade is built around the bottom line: find the right work early, understand where you have a real advantage, and turn that into revenue delivered."
Cascade founders: Hannia Zia and Joana Ferreira.
The traction has come fast. In a few months, Cascade has signed AEC customers whose work spans some of the world’s most notorious projects – including JFK, LaGuardia, data centers and nuclear reactors.
The signs arrive years before the bid
Long before an RFP, a multi million dollar project leaves traces. A bond filing is a project taking shape. A property changing hands is a developer moving. A line in a county capital plan is a building that does not exist yet, and a firm somewhere is going to win it. Cascade detects these events continuously across bond filings, permits, capital plans, property transactions, earnings transcripts, budget announcements and meeting minutes, and connects them to what they signal: where work is forming, what kind, and who is positioned to win it.
The tools the industry relies on read none of this.
“A project broke ground a few blocks away from me. I’ve been in the industry for 30 years, I didn’t even know it was out for bid.” said Tim Johannesson, Principal at Smallwood, the luxury architecture firm behind projects for the Four Seasons, the Ritz, Hyatt and many others. “Cascade has now helped us respond to and win more projects, including a recent $6M project, that I was only able to find through Cascade.”
Cascade closes the gap. It anticipates projects as they form, scores each one for fit so firms pursue the work they are most likely to win, and surfaces warm paths in through relationships already sitting in Outlook and other software. Every customer makes the system sharper: each pursuit teaches it which signals matter, which firms are credible for which work, and where teaming opportunities exist.
"Cascade has become a valuable partner in how we review plans, organize project information, and identify opportunities more efficiently. The platform continues to improve, and a single successful project can deliver a return that exceeds the cost for years. We are pleased to have adopted the technology early and to be helping shape how AI can be used in the construction industry,” said Alan Ruth, President and CEO of S.A. Casey Construction, a Florida-based general contractor whose portfolio includes work at the Kia Center, Orange County Government facilities, and major private developments.
Built by Amazon and Google operators, pulled in by the market
Cascade was founded by Hannia Zia and Joana Ferreira, two former Google operators who met at UnlikelyAI, the startup founded by the inventor of Amazon Alexa. There, Hannia served as VP of Product and Joana led the AI platform, building a knowledge graph of the world's information and training LLM agents to navigate it.
"Hedge funds look at a crazy amount of data to predict stock movements,” said Joana Ferreira, co-founder and CTO of Cascade. “We use the same logic to predict construction projects.” Joana previously was an early engineer at one of the largest trading apps in the world.
"Business development in AEC has always run on relationships, timing and institutional memory," said Sarah Sapone Hayes, Director of Strategy & Innovation at FORGE Architecture, the San Francisco design firm behind The Battery SF, the VF Outdoor campus and the city’s first net zero energy office. "Cascade gives us a systematic way to see the opportunities that matter, a credible path into them, and far less manual work behind every pursuit."
Their route into construction was personal as much as commercial. Joana grew up in a Portuguese town built on construction and carpentry. Hannia’s father tried to start a construction business, but it failed. Hannia's conversations with CFOs in New York produced Cascade's first customer, Munoz Engineering, and a conference in Denver quickly brought the next.
"Cascade helps us plan strategically ahead in the highly competitive AEC industry in NYC," said Syed Irfan Raza, CFO at Munoz Engineering, which worked on LGA, Moynihan Train Hall and Cuomo Bridge. "The team delivers quickly, and they understand how this industry is built on relationships and trust."
The funding will accelerate adoption and deepen Cascade's network across the industry. Even building a house takes twenty companies coming together, and multimillion-dollar projects take an order of magnitude more. As more firms join, Cascade matches them to each other: partners to bid with, connections in new regions, teaming opportunities across the US. The platform gets stronger with every firm that joins, and so does every firm on it.
"Construction is one of the largest markets in the world, and the way firms find and win work has barely changed in decades," said Marcus Segal, Investor at Andreessen Horowitz Speedrun. "Cascade starts with a painful revenue problem. That is a powerful wedge into how construction work gets pursued, partnered on and delivered."
"Hannia and Joana combine deep AI capability with genuine respect for how this industry actually works, and customers can feel that." said Matt Penneycard at Ada Ventures. While Scott Johnson at Blitzscaling Ventures added: "Cascade quickly grows their customer's revenue, and the network effects and product led growth make it a high-potential Blitzscaler."
Stephan de Moraes, Managing General Partner at Índico Capital Partners added: "In a $900 billion global industry, finding and winning the right projects has remained a manual, relationship-driven challenge for decades. Cascade is completely rewriting that playbook. Hannia and Joana have taken world-class AI capability and built a predictive engine that solves a massive revenue problem for the construction sector before a bid even exists. At Índico, we are thrilled to back Cascade as they transform how the built world is planned, pursued, and delivered."
The team’s overall ambition runs the full arc of a project. Cascade intends to be there at the first trace of work forming, through the pursuit, the win and the build, until the day of handoff.
Media images can be found here.
About Cascade
Cascade is building the AI platform for architecture, engineering, and construction firms that predicts projects before they become public, matches firms to work they are likely to win, and helps teams catch drawing issues before they reach the field. For more information please visit https://usecascade.ai/ or follow via LinkedIn. We are hiring!
For further information please contact the Cascade press office on media@usecascade.ai
Legal Disclaimer:
EIN Presswire provides this news content "as is" without warranty of any kind. We do not accept any responsibility or liability for the accuracy, content, images, videos, licenses, completeness, legality, or reliability of the information contained in this article. If you have any complaints or copyright issues related to this article, kindly contact the author above.
