Cascade raises $3.5M to help construction companies find and win projects

Cascade, a startup building a platform to help architecture, engineering, and construction companies find and win projects, has raised a $3.5 million seed round from Andreessen Horowitz Speedrun, Ada Ventures, and Snowball VC.

Launched in 2025, Cascade is the result of its founders, Hannia Zia and Joana Ferreira, who saw first-hand the difficulties that construction businesses face with predictive maintenance work.

“My mom worked for a company that sells to construction companies, and my uncle builds mansions in the Middle East. They’re amazing at their jobs but they don’t have access to the right tools to get more work done,” Ferreira told TechCrunch. And Zia remembers when her father tried to start a construction business in his native Pakistan: “He couldn’t get enough projects to make a living.”

Zia describes the current process of securing construction projects as “an endless treasure hunt,” with companies having to enter the portals of every US state, city, state, county, and federal agency. “So if you’re really good at building suspension bridges, you have to find all those opportunities in all these different sites.”

Cascade aims to help architecture, construction, and engineering firms in this case by tracking ongoing and upcoming projects, then using previous tender data to predict which developers are likely to win deals.

Here’s how the platform works: A company signs on to the platform, and Cascade uses AI tools to determine which projects have the best chance of winning. It also predicts which projects are coming, using different signals and data points from all US states, local governments, private contractors, and federal agencies. For example, if a state announces a $100 million affordable housing grant, Cascade will monitor which developers won the grant the last time it was announced.

“We connect that data, and we tell our clients: ‘It’s possible that one of these five developers will win this grant that was just announced, so go and start talking to them to win projects,'” explains Ferreira.

The duo applied to the a16z Speedrun last September. They said the pressure to perform well on demo day and being around the “genius” of other founders helped the company sign contracts with firms to build JFK and La Guardia airports, Four Seasons hotels, and other data centers. “Speedrun has given us visibility and a stamp of approval to close big deals,” Zia said.

The startup will use the new capital to go to market, hold industry events, and hire more developers.

Other startups in this space include GovWin IQ and ConstructConnect, but Ferreira says Cascade is more about AI than these platforms.

“Every time a customer wins a bid, it gives feedback, so the system is always smarter. Over time, we’ll have a complete map of the industry that our AI can dissect to predict the best projects and leads for each customer,” he said.