Trunk Tools: From Carpenter to AI Construction Startup CEO

Construction companies deal with a lot of documents — so many that it can be difficult to process and manage them all. According to one recent survey, a third of construction professionals found accessing documents to be a challenge in completing a project, while a fourth said that inaccurate project paperwork has contributed to a construction delay.

Sarah Buchner knows this well. Originally a carpenter, she founded a startup, Trunk Tools, that provides automation tools to organize unstructured construction documentation.

“I grew up in a poor environment in a small village in Austria and started working as a carpenter at age 12,” Buchner said. “After many years in carpentry, I switched over to the general contractor side and worked my way up from superintendent to project manager to group leader. My PhD research made me realize that I could have a greater impact on my field by developing disruptive construction technology, and this inspired me to move across the world to Silicon Valley to attend Stanford and get my MBA.”

Trunk Tools’ platform can take in files like PDFs, spreadsheets, drawings, blueprints and tables and answer questions about them in a chatbot-like interface (e.g. “What type of power outlets are in the art studio?”). Trunk Tools can also “link” scheduled construction activities with supporting documentation, attempting to spot potential project issues and surface insights.

“Traditional construction software, like Procore, is centered around documenting workflows and storing data within a predefined system,” Buchner said. “In contrast, we’re introducing a paradigm shift where Q&A and AI enable construction teams to interact with information using natural language.”

Buchner says that for one customer’s $500 million high-rise condo in NYC, there were 3.6 million pages of documentation. Given the amount of time it takes to sort through file folders that massive, it’s not exactly surprising that construction industry workers loathe paperwork.

A poll by Dodge Data and Viewpoint, a construction accounting software vendor, found that only 28% of contractors were okay using paper processes, while just 47% said they were satisfied with spreadsheets. Seventy-nine percent of respondents to the poll expressed a willingness to adopt construction management tooling.

“If printed and stacked, the 3.6 million pages would be 3x the height of the building itself,” Buchner said. “It would take a human 50 years to read — it takes Trunk Tools seconds to structure and give insights.”

Occupying a construction software market that could be worth $7.5 billion by 2032, Trunk Tools competes with vendors like Briq (which uses AI to automate construction financial processes), Join (a “decision-making” platform for construction) and PlanRadar (which digitizes construction and real estate docs).

Trunk Tools appears to be holding its own, however, with a “double digit” number of construction industry customers and thousands of users. Buchner says that the company is targeting a 4x revenue to burn rate ratio.

To help get it there, Trunk Tools this month closed a $20 million Series A funding round led by Redpoint. Bringing the company’s total raised to $30 million, the new cash will be put toward growing Trunk Tools’ 30-person, New York-based team as well as developing new services like Trunk’s recently launched construction worker incentive program, Buchner says.

“Construction technology so far has focused mainly on digitizing — taking what we used to do on paper and doing it on computers,” Buchner said. “Slipped timelines and rework can completely crush the razor-thin margins of construction projects, and Trunk Tools can alleviate both.”