Kaya AI
AI-driven supply-chain intelligence for general contractors in data center and critical infrastructure construction.
Website: https://usekaya.ai/
Cover Block
From the public record
| Field | Value |
|---|---|
| Name | Kaya AI |
| Tagline | AI-driven supply-chain intelligence for general contractors in data center and critical infrastructure construction. |
| Headquarters | Columbus, Ohio |
| Founded | 2022 |
| Stage | Pre-Seed |
| Business Model | SaaS |
| Industry | Logistics / Supply Chain |
| Technology | AI / Machine Learning |
| Geography | North America |
| Growth Profile | Venture Scale |
| Founding Team | Co-Founders (2) |
| Funding Label | Pre-seed |
| Total Disclosed | ~$5,300,000 [PR Newswire, January 2025] |
Links
From the public record
- Website: https://usekaya.ai/
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/jobs/view/senior-full-stack-ai-engineer-at-kaya-ai-4442083599
- Last Mile Delivery: https://usekaya.ai/products/last-mile
- OFCI: https://usekaya.ai/products/ofci
The Short Version
PUBLIC Kaya AI builds AI-driven supply-chain intelligence software for general contractors and other participants in data center and mission-critical construction, and it merits investor attention now because it emerged from stealth in January 2025 with a named institutional syndicate behind a narrowly defined workflow problem that remains painful and operationally material on large projects [PR Newswire, January 2025]. The company was founded in 2022 in Columbus, Ohio by Ojonimi Bako and Nicholas Selz, with the origin story tied to Bako's exposure to construction-management problems and the founders' effort to apply software to a category still burdened by fragmented procurement and delivery coordination [Ohio State Alumni Magazine, March 2026] [Optimist Ventures, February 2025].
The product case is straightforward: Kaya says it consolidates construction and procurement data from systems including Procore and Oracle, then automates lead-time tracking and delivery scheduling, with a newer product surface built around its AI agent, Amber, for procurement, equipment tracking, and last-mile coordination [Optimist Ventures, February 2025] [Kaya AI] [Kaya AI, retrieved 2026]. The differentiator, to the extent public evidence supports one, is domain specificity rather than model novelty, namely software tuned to owner-furnished equipment, submittals, delivery dependencies, and project data that general contractors already use but rarely see in one operating layer [Kaya AI, retrieved 2026] [CB Insights].
The founding team looks credible for an early construction software bet. Optimist Ventures says Bako brings construction and supply-chain experience plus a Stanford MBA, while public profile materials tie him to prior strategy and operations work at WalmartLabs; Selz previously spent 11 years at YouTube in brand strategy and product marketing roles before co-founding Kaya [Optimist Ventures, February 2025] [Fortune, October 2015] [Forbes, March 2016].
On capitalization, Kaya announced a $5.3 million pre-seed round in January 2025 led by 53 Stations, Suffolk Technologies, and Soma Capital, with additional backing from Barclays Black Formation Investments, RXR, Mantis VC, Virta Ventures, and Optimist Ventures [PR Newswire, January 2025] [Optimist Ventures, February 2025]. The model is presented as SaaS, and the public traction claim is that the platform is installed with some of the nation's largest general contractors and is helping manage billions of dollars in construction projects, although that deployment detail remains company-linked and should be treated cautiously until customer names or usage metrics are independently verified [Yahoo Finance, January 2025] [PR Newswire, January 2025].
Over the next 12 to 18 months, the key watchpoints are whether Kaya turns early contractor adoption into referenceable customers, proves that Amber can sit inside real procurement and logistics workflows without creating trust or verification bottlenecks, and expands beyond point coordination into a durable system of record for mission-critical build programs [BIM Tools Hub] [Kaya AI, retrieved 2026]. Public evidence of hiring remains limited but directionally consistent with product build-out, including a surfaced Senior Full Stack AI Engineer role in the U.S. [LinkedIn].
Unconfirmed -- This section mixes independently corroborated funding and founder-background facts with material product and traction claims that remain partly company or investor sourced.
Taxonomy Snapshot
| Axis | Value |
|---|---|
| Stage | Pre-Seed |
| Business Model | SaaS |
| Industry / Vertical | Logistics / Supply Chain |
| Technology Type | AI / Machine Learning |
| Geography | North America |
| Growth Profile | Venture Scale |
| Founding Team | Co-Founders (2) |
| Funding | Pre-seed, total disclosed about $5.3 million |
The Company in Brief
PUBLIC
Kaya AI came out of stealth in January 2025 with a narrowly defined construction workflow in mind: supply-chain coordination for data centers and other mission-critical builds, a category where delays often sit between procurement systems, field teams, and delivery schedules rather than in any single software tool [Kaya AI, retrieved 2026].
The public chronology is still short, but the sequence is clear. The company was founded in 2022, built its early product around construction and procurement data coordination, and by January 2025 announced its launch from stealth alongside a $5.3 million pre-seed financing round [Kaya AI, retrieved 2026]. Its current public positioning centers on AI-driven supply-chain intelligence for general contractors and related project stakeholders, with product pages describing modules for last-mile delivery coordination and owner-furnished equipment management [Kaya AI, retrieved 2026].
Within that frame, the most relevant milestone after launch is product surface expansion rather than corporate complexity. The website now presents Kaya as a multi-workflow platform, including Amber, an AI agent for procurement and coordination work, Last Mile Delivery, and OFCI tooling connected to construction data systems, which suggests the company is broadening from an initial scheduling and visibility wedge into a more integrated operating layer for complex projects [Kaya AI, retrieved 2026].
Unconfirmed -- This section relies primarily on company website materials, with no Crunchbase or state filing evidence provided in the source set.
What They Have Built
MIXED
Kaya AI is positioning itself as a workflow layer for procurement and site logistics in complex construction, not as a general-purpose construction management suite. Public materials describe the product as consolidating construction and procurement data from systems including Procore and Oracle, then automating delivery scheduling and lead-time tracking for general contractors [Optimist Ventures, February 2025]. The company and investor materials frame the initial wedge narrowly around supply-chain coordination, with an emphasis on reducing data silos, improving procurement visibility, and surfacing delivery risk before it affects execution [PR Newswire, January 2025] [Optimist Ventures, February 2025].
The website expands that operating scope into named product surfaces. Kaya describes a Last Mile Delivery module that schedules, coordinates, and tracks deliveries from supplier dispatch through jobsite arrival, and an OFCI product for owner-furnished equipment management that connects to systems such as Procore, Autodesk ACC, Trimble, SAP, and PeopleSoft [Kaya AI, retrieved 2026]. Separate company and third-party profiles describe an AI agent called Amber, with some earlier coverage using the name Jarvis, that answers natural-language questions against live project data and helps track procurement, equipment, submittals, shipping, and schedule dependencies [Kaya AI, retrieved 2026] [CB Insights] [BIM Tools Hub]. That breadth is directionally interesting, but some of the more expansive capability claims remain company-authored or profile-based rather than independently demonstrated, and one external source notes that probabilistic AI outputs require human verification [BIM Tools Hub].
The technical stack is only lightly visible in public. The clearest external signal is a Senior Full Stack AI Engineer posting for the U.S. market, which indicates the company is hiring to build AI-native products for construction supply-chain management, but the posting does not provide enough detail to map model providers, infrastructure, or deployment architecture (inferred from job postings) [LinkedIn]. The strongest public evidence today is therefore about workflow integration and user-facing coordination tasks, not about proprietary model performance or defensibility at the systems level.
Single-source, plausible -- Product workflows are corroborated by investor and company materials, but several detailed AI capability claims rely on company-authored pages or secondary profiles.
Market Size and Demand
PUBLIC
The market matters now because data center and mission-critical construction is colliding with a more complex procurement environment, and Kaya is trying to sell into that coordination bottleneck rather than into a generic software budget [PR Newswire, January 2025] [ProjectFinance.Law].
The public record does not support a clean TAM, SAM, and SOM build for Kaya from named third-party market reports, so the more defensible approach is to anchor on analogous markets and then narrow by use case. Kaya is positioned around supply-chain intelligence for general contractors and other participants in data centers, life sciences, advanced manufacturing, and related critical infrastructure projects [PR Newswire, January 2025] [LinkedIn]. That places it at the intersection of construction software, procurement workflow, and site logistics, with its initial wedge described as reducing data silos, improving procurement visibility, and identifying delivery risk before disruption hits execution [PR Newswire, January 2025].
The demand signal in the available research is less about category size than about workflow pain. Optimist Ventures describes Kaya as consolidating construction and procurement data from systems including Procore and Oracle, then automating delivery scheduling and lead-time tracking for general contractors [Optimist Ventures, February 2025]. Kaya's own later product materials extend that thesis into owner-furnished equipment management and last-mile delivery coordination, which suggests the practical budget line may come from schedule-risk reduction on high-value projects rather than from a stand-alone analytics spend [Kaya AI, retrieved 2026] [Kaya AI, retrieved 2026].
| Market lens | Public claim | Relevance to Kaya |
|---|---|---|
| Long-term infrastructure build cycle | Co-founder Nicholas Selz said "75% of the world's infrastructure needed by 2050 hasn't been built yet" [PR Newswire, January 2025] | Directionally supports a durable digitization thesis, but it is a company-framed claim rather than an independent market model |
| Mission-critical construction | Kaya focuses on data centers and other mission-critical project supply chains [PR Newswire, January 2025] | Narrows the commercial wedge toward projects where delays are expensive and procurement coordination matters more |
| Multi-system construction workflow | Kaya consolidates data from systems including Procore and Oracle [Optimist Ventures, February 2025] | Suggests adjacency to existing construction-tech budgets instead of requiring a net-new software category |
| Owner-furnished equipment and site logistics | Kaya markets OFCI and Last Mile Delivery products [Kaya AI, retrieved 2026] [Kaya AI, retrieved 2026] | Expands the reachable use case into equipment tracking and on-site delivery orchestration |
The table points to a market thesis built around cost of delay, not broad construction digitization alone. That is a narrower and potentially stronger entry point, especially in project types where procurement lead times and delivery windows can move the entire schedule.
Tailwinds in the cited research are straightforward. Kaya and its backers repeatedly frame the product around large-scale projects with labor constraints, execution complexity, and fragmented project data, particularly in data centers and critical infrastructure construction [PR Newswire, January 2025] [ProjectFinance.Law] [SBLK Ventures, January 2025]. If those conditions persist, software that can unify procurement, equipment, scheduling, and supplier information into one operating layer has a clearer reason to exist than a general-purpose assistant would [CB Insights].
The adjacent markets are important because they define both expansion paths and substitute products. Kaya touches construction management platforms, enterprise resource planning, equipment-management workflows, and site-logistics coordination, with integrations or data connections cited across Procore, Oracle, Autodesk ACC, Trimble, SAP, and PeopleSoft sources tied to company materials [Optimist Ventures, February 2025] [Kaya AI, retrieved 2026]. That breadth creates room to grow into a larger operational system, but it also means Kaya is entering buying centers where incumbents already control data, workflow, or both.
The macro and regulatory picture is supportive in a general sense but still lightly evidenced in public sources. Public materials point to sustained infrastructure buildout and continued demand for mission-critical facilities, while Kaya's own positioning emphasizes security and enterprise readiness through SOC 2 compliance, a relevant signal when selling into large contractors, developers, or hyperscaler-adjacent programs [Kaya AI, retrieved 2026]. Even so, the current evidence base is stronger on the existence of coordination pain than on quantified category budgets, which keeps market sizing confidence below the level investors would want for a precision forecast.
Single-source, plausible -- This section relies on one independent investor source, one press release, one job posting, and company materials; the market framing is directionally supported, but precise TAM, SAM, and SOM figures are not independently established.
Who Else Is Fighting for This
MIXED
Kaya AI is positioning itself less against generic construction software and more against the coordination gap between project systems, procurement workflows, and jobsite delivery execution for mission-critical builds [PR Newswire, January 2025] [Optimist Ventures, February 2025].
| Company | Positioning | Stage / Funding | Notable Differentiator | Source |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Kaya AI | AI-driven supply-chain intelligence for general contractors and critical-infrastructure construction | Pre-seed, $5.3M disclosed in January 2025 | Focus on consolidating construction and procurement data from systems including Procore and Oracle, with automation for delivery scheduling and lead-time tracking | [PR Newswire, January 2025] [Optimist Ventures, February 2025] |
| Livecosts | Named competitor in construction-related software | Structured facts identify it as a competitor, but do not support a more specific public positioning statement in this section | [Structured facts] | |
| Verusen | Named competitor in supply-chain software | Structured facts identify it as a competitor, but do not support a more specific public positioning statement in this section | [Structured facts] | |
| Scalera.ai | Named competitor in AI-enabled construction software | Structured facts identify it as a competitor, but do not support a more specific public positioning statement in this section | [Structured facts] |
The competitive map splits into three groups. First are incumbents and system-of-record products, represented in Kaya's own materials by software it connects to rather than replaces, including Procore, Oracle, Autodesk ACC, Trimble, SAP, and PeopleSoft [Optimist Ventures, February 2025] [Kaya AI, retrieved 2026]. Those platforms matter because they already sit inside enterprise construction and procurement workflows, which means Kaya's near-term competition is partly against internal extensions of existing systems, not only against venture-backed startups.
Second are challengers that try to own a narrower operational wedge. The public record here is thinner, but the named competitive set, Livecosts, Verusen, and Scalera.ai, Third are adjacent substitutes, namely spreadsheets, email threads, supplier calls, and coordinator-driven manual processes, which Kaya is explicitly trying to compress through automation around delivery scheduling, equipment tracking, and lead-time visibility [PR Newswire, January 2025] [Kaya AI, retrieved 2026]. In construction software, those manual substitutes often remain the default competitor even after a budget is approved.
Kaya's clearest edge today appears to be domain focus plus data aggregation. Public sources consistently describe a product built around mission-critical construction supply chains, with integrations into construction and enterprise systems and an AI layer trained on documents and project data such as drawings, specs, submittals, RFIs, supplier quotes, schedules, and equipment lead times [Optimist Ventures, February 2025] [CB Insights, retrieved 2026]. That can be durable if Kaya becomes the operational layer teams rely on for daily decisions, because workflow depth and historical project context tend to increase switching costs. It is also somewhat perishable, because the current evidence for that edge is still largely company or investor described, and larger incumbents already control many of the underlying data systems Kaya depends on [Kaya AI, retrieved 2026] [Optimist Ventures, February 2025].
The main exposure is that Kaya does not appear to own the system of record or the customer channel. If a platform such as Procore, Oracle, or another incumbent broadens its native supply-chain and delivery coordination capabilities, Kaya could be pushed into a feature comparison rather than a platform decision [Optimist Ventures, February 2025]. Kaya is also exposed to naming and product-surface complexity: the market-facing product language spans Amber, Kaya Copilot, Last Mile Delivery, and OFCI, which can help cover multiple use cases but can also dilute positioning if buyers do not quickly grasp the core platform thesis [BIM Tools Hub, retrieved 2026] [Kaya AI, retrieved 2026].
The most plausible 18-month scenario is a wedge-first outcome rather than category domination. Kaya is best positioned if data center and other critical-infrastructure contractors continue to buy specialist coordination software that sits on top of entrenched systems, in which case Kaya could win accounts where delivery risk, owner-furnished equipment complexity, and schedule sensitivity are unusually high [PR Newswire, January 2025] [Kaya AI, retrieved 2026]. Winner if integration-driven overlays remain acceptable: Kaya AI. Loser if general contractors decide existing enterprise platforms are sufficient once basic AI and logistics features are added: smaller point vendors such as Scalera.ai,
Opportunity
PUBLIC
If Kaya executes, the prize is not a niche construction software outcome but a chance to become the operating layer for supply-chain coordination in mission-critical construction, a part of the market where delays are expensive, data is fragmented, and buyers already accept specialized software if it reduces schedule risk [PR Newswire, January 2025] [Optimist Ventures, February 2025].
The largest plausible outcome is straightforward: Kaya becomes the default system of record and action for procurement, owner-furnished equipment, and last-mile delivery across data center and other critical-infrastructure builds. That is reachable, not merely aspirational, because the company is not starting from a blank sheet. It launched with a sector-specific product thesis, named integrations into systems such as Procore and Oracle, and investor backing from firms with direct construction and real-estate adjacency, including Suffolk Technologies and RXR [PR Newswire, January 2025] [Optimist Ventures, February 2025]. Public materials also show product expansion beyond a single workflow, from delivery coordination into OFCI management and an AI assistant marketed as Amber, which suggests an effort to own the workflow graph rather than just one pain point [Kaya AI, retrieved 2026] [Kaya AI, retrieved 2026] [CB Insights].
That matters because construction software often stalls when it remains a reporting layer. Kaya's public positioning is more operational than observational: it consolidates procurement and construction data, automates delivery scheduling and lead-time tracking, and is aimed at general contractors and other participants in complex projects where missed handoffs can move project timelines and budget outcomes [Optimist Ventures, February 2025] [PR Newswire, January 2025]. If that product works in the field, the upside is a category platform in a segment where workflow depth can matter more than broad but shallow horizontal adoption.
| Scenario | What happens | Catalyst | Why it's plausible |
|---|---|---|---|
| Data center control tower | Kaya becomes the preferred coordination platform for general contractors and developers building data centers and other mission-critical facilities | A category-tipping set of reference deployments among large U.S. general contractors already cited by the company, plus investor access through Suffolk Technologies and RXR [PR Newswire, January 2025] [Optimist Ventures, February 2025] | Public materials already place Kaya in data center and mission-critical construction, and the company says it is installed with some of the nation's largest general contractors [PR Newswire, January 2025] [Yahoo Finance, January 2025] |
| OFCI system of record | Kaya's OFCI product becomes the standard workflow for owner-furnished equipment on large builds, expanding from tracking into coordination and risk management | The productization of OFCI as a distinct module, connected to systems such as Procore, Autodesk ACC, Trimble, SAP, and PeopleSoft [Kaya AI, retrieved 2026] | OFCI is unusually painful on complex projects because equipment data sits across multiple stakeholders and systems; Kaya is explicitly building connectors and workflow around that fragmentation [Kaya AI, retrieved 2026] [Optimist Ventures, February 2025] |
| AI procurement copilot becomes daily workflow | Amber evolves from an assistant into the daily interface for project teams asking natural-language questions across live project data | Broader adoption of Amber, which company materials and third-party profiles describe as domain-trained on construction documents, quotes, schedules, and equipment data [CB Insights] [BIM Tools Hub] | The product claims are specific to repetitive coordination work rather than generic AI assistance, and the company has already tied the agent to procurement, equipment tracking, and delivery workflows [Kaya AI, retrieved 2026] [BIM Tools Hub] |
The compounding mechanism here is a data-and-workflow flywheel. Each deployment that consolidates procurement, scheduling, equipment, and delivery data into one system should improve Kaya's value on the next adjacent workflow, because the company does not need to re-win context from scratch each time. Public product materials point in that direction: Last Mile Delivery handles dispatch-to-jobsite coordination, OFCI manages owner-furnished equipment, and Amber is positioned as the layer that can reason across drawings, specs, submittals, RFIs, supplier quotes, schedules, and lead times in a single project graph [Kaya AI, retrieved 2026] [Kaya AI, retrieved 2026] [CB Insights].
There is also an early distribution flywheel visible in the investor base. Suffolk Technologies brings construction-tech pattern recognition, RXR adds owner-side credibility, and Optimist cited positive feedback from RXR Realty while describing Kaya's ability to connect fragmented systems [Optimist Ventures, February 2025]. That does not prove repeatability across the sector, but it does suggest a route where one successful deployment can shorten sales cycles for the next, especially in a market where referenceability and trust matter as much as feature breadth [Ohio State Alumni Magazine, March 2026] [Optimist Ventures, February 2025].
The size of the win depends on whether Kaya remains a workflow tool or becomes infrastructure. A reasonable public comparable frame is Procore, which built a large public company around construction workflow and collaboration software, showing that vertical software in construction can support meaningful scale [Procore, October 2026]. Kaya is earlier and more narrowly focused, but if the "data center control tower" or "OFCI system of record" scenarios play out, the company could plausibly support a multibillion-dollar enterprise value (scenario, not a forecast) as a category leader in mission-critical construction coordination. The bullish case rests on one specific idea: that supply-chain intelligence becomes central enough to project execution that buyers standardize on a small number of platforms, and Kaya is one of them [PR Newswire, January 2025] [Kaya AI, retrieved 2026].
Single-source, plausible -- This section relies on one independently reported financing and product thesis source, plus investor commentary and company materials for product breadth and traction claims.
Sources
From the public record
[PR Newswire, January 2025] Kaya AI Launches with $5.3M Pre-Seed to Transform Data Center and Mission Critical Project Supply Chains with AI | https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/kaya-ai-launches-with-5-3m-pre-seed-to-transform-data-center-and-mission-critical-project-supply-chains-with-ai-302356728.html
[Ohio State Alumni Magazine, March 2026] This AI startup gives builders smarter path forward | https://www.alumnimagazine.osu.edu/story/ai-startup-gives-builders-smarter-path-forward
[Optimist Ventures, February 2025] Why We Invested in Kaya AI | https://www.optimist.vc/why-we-invested-in-kaya-ai
[Kaya AI, retrieved 2026] Kaya AI Supply Chain Intelligence for Construction | https://usekaya.ai/
[Fortune, October 2015] Walgreens and Citi Would Rather Invest in Killer Apps Than Buy More Ads | https://fortune.com/2015/10/12/walgreens-walmart-citi-711-mobile-apps/
[Kaya AI, retrieved 2026] Last Mile Delivery, your site logistics coordinator | https://usekaya.ai/products/last-mile
[Kaya AI, retrieved 2026] OFCI, your owner-furnished equipment manager | https://usekaya.ai/products/ofci
[LinkedIn, retrieved October 29, 2026] Senior Full Stack AI Engineer at Kaya AI | https://www.linkedin.com/jobs/view/senior-full-stack-ai-engineer-at-kaya-ai-4442083599
[Kaya AI, retrieved 2026] Kaya AI is Now SOC 2 Compliant | https://usekaya.ai/kaya-ai-blog/kaya-is-now-soc-2-compliant
Articles about Kaya AI
- Kaya AI's First Agent Is Tracking a Billion-Dollar Build — The startup's AI assistant, Amber, consolidates Procore and Oracle data to answer questions and flag delivery risks for major contractors.