Cascade, a startup building a platform to help architecture, engineering and construction firms 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, witnessing firsthand the difficulties construction companies face in securing work in a predictable manner.

“My mother worked at a company that sold materials to construction companies, and my uncle built mansions in the Middle East. They are amazing at their craft, but they just don’t have access to the right tools to get more work,” Ferreira told TechCrunch. And Zia recalled the time his father tried to start a construction business in his native Pakistan: “He just couldn’t get enough projects to support himself.”

Zia describes the current process of searching for construction projects as a “constant treasure hunt,” in which companies have to log into the portals of every state, city, district, county and federal agency in the U.S. “So if you’re really good at building suspension bridges, you have to find all of those opportunities on these disparate portals.”

Cascade aims to help architecture, construction and engineering firms on this front by tracking ongoing and upcoming projects, and then using data from previous tenders to predict which developers are likely to win the deals.

Here’s how the platform works: a company registers on the platform and then Cascade uses artificial intelligence tools to determine which projects are most likely to win. It also predicts which projects are coming, using different signals and data points across states, local districts, private contracts, and U.S. federal agencies. For example, if a state announces a $100 million grant for affordable housing, Cascade will track which developers won the grant the last time it was announced.

“We plug that data in and tell our clients, ‘One of these five developers will most likely win this newly announced grant, so start talking to them about winning projects,’” Ferreira explained.

The duo applied for the A16z speedrun last September. They said the pressure to perform well on demo day and be close to the “brilliance” of other founders helped the company sign contracts with firms that built JFK and La Guardia airports, Four Seasons hotels and some data centers. “Speedrun gave us visibility and a seal of approval to close great deals,” Zia said.

The startup will use the fresh money to go to market, organize industry events and hire more engineers.

Other startups in this area include GovWin IQ and ConstructConnect, but Ferreira maintains that Cascade is a bit more AI-native than these platforms.

“Every time a client wins a bid, they give feedback, so the system continues to get smarter. Over time, we will have a complete map of the industry that our AI can traverse to predict the best projects and leads for each client,” he said.