LeanCon Raises $6M to Rebuild Pre-Construction with AI
LeanCon closed a $6 million seed round, doubling its initial $3 million target. The round was led by Ibex Investors with participation from Fusion VC, Newman Architects, TCA LA, Connecticut Innovations, Siegel Capital, a publicly traded construction firm, and a group of experienced angels across construction, real estate, and tech. Among them: Phil Bernstein, former VP of AEC at Autodesk and current Deputy Dean at the Yale School of Architecture.
The company's platform is already active on $650 million in projects across New York. For many teams, it's the first credible path to making pre-construction fast, consistent, and data-driven.
What LeanCon Actually Does
LeanCon is building an AI-powered pre-construction engineering team. It compresses the heavy lift-schedules, logistics, sequencing, and cost projections-from months to about seven minutes.
In testing and client use, early planning costs dropped from roughly $2 million to near $0. Teams reported higher bid win rates and better pipeline visibility.
The system learns from real project histories and adapts outputs to each client's workflows. As designs change, schedules, costs, and construction methods update in real time. LeanCon is also collaborating with one of the nation's largest privately held construction and development companies, reflecting demand from major firms dealing with rising costs, labor gaps, and project complexity.
Why It Matters for Owners, Developers, and GCs
- Reduce project costs
- Shorten schedules by up to 20%
- Increase profitability for developers and contractors
- Expand capacity to pursue and deliver more work
- Strengthen workforce investment with more predictable pipelines
What Leaders Are Saying
"Construction projects are simply too complex to plan optimally and, until now, the system wasn't built for that complexity," said Ziv Levi, CEO and Co-Founder of LeanCon. "LeanCon has rebuilt construction planning with AI and will ultimately save project teams time and money while simultaneously winning more development bids."
Phil Bernstein added, "I told them the technology sounded impossible. But nine months later, after LeanCon demonstrated a working MVP on a live Manhattan project, I was on board. That combination of deep construction knowledge and technical execution is exactly what makes LeanCon so compelling."
"By transforming pre-construction from a manual, drawn-out process into an intelligent, automated workflow, LeanCon is unlocking unprecedented efficiency and value creation in a very traditional industry," said Aaron Rinberg, Partner at Ibex Investors.
Public-Sector Potential and 2026 Roadmap
LeanCon's AI is being evaluated for infrastructure and public-sector planning, where accuracy and fewer overruns directly impact taxpayer dollars. The company plans to scale engineering, deepen its dataset, and expand across the U.S. in 2026-pushing pre-construction toward precise, automated decision-making.
Practical Takeaways for Project Teams
- Start small: pilot on 1-2 bids with tight deadlines or limited staff bandwidth.
- Prep your data: org-wide naming standards, clean historical schedules, and cost codes improve outputs.
- Integrate early: connect estimating, scheduling, and document control to remove handoff friction.
- Set governance: define who approves AI-generated schedules, logistics, and costing assumptions.
- Track lift: measure bid cycle time, win rate, cost-to-bid, and forecast accuracy against your baseline.
If your team is building AI skills in-house, explore role-based learning paths here: Complete AI Training: Courses by Job.
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