Our Series B in PermitFlow: Breaking the Construction Bottleneck with AI

One of the areas where we see the greatest upside for AI impact is Applied AI, or applications that accelerate intelligence and productivity for knowledge work. We’ve seen a few breakouts already: Cursor in programming, Decagon in customer operations, Harvey in legal. These are potent systems that leverage LLM-backed search and reasoning to plow through work that otherwise carries high intellectual capital cost. 

Reasoning for software development is mostly straightforward – the solution space is mostly unbounded. You build what you can imagine. In the physical world, that solution space is very bounded – by laws, rules, regulations, compliance, and building codes. Cities draft complex regulations and rules with the best intentions, but because of them, construction is rife with excess costs, and the development pace never meets the need. 

Fortunately, reasoning about the regulatory landscape, managing submissions and designs back and forth, and accelerating approval times are a perfect use case for LLMs. PermitFlow is the clear breakout leader in this space. 

Today, we’re announcing that PermitFlow has raised its Series B from Accel. 

I’ve known founder Francis Thumpasery for many years now, and he’s as sharp as they come. He has a fierce competitive drive to win and get better at every stage, and a humble thoughtfulness for designing the winning company long term. And he’s wielding the newest forces of AI to tame one of the largest categories in our country’s GDP. PermitFlow is growing revenue substantially (4x+ this last year!) just as we’re entering a major CAPEX super-cycle in the US. We believe this is the right product, right team, and right timing.