Bricks And Bytes

Missed an episode of the Executive Briefing last month? This is your ten-minute catch-up.
Four stories from the last four weeks, what each one means for your business, and which are worth going back to in full.
Inside:
The new kind of buyer circling construction, and why they want your firm, not your tech
The market split the banks have started to price in
The contractor who killed his ERP, his dispatch system and his time cards, and rebuilt on one platform
Why AI got 280 times cheaper while everyone's bills went up
No longer form this week (I have been busy in France!! - more on that soon). Just the month that mattered, in plain English, for people who run construction businesses.
Which of the four hit hardest? Tell us in the comments on the LinkedIn post.

"80% of the decks landing on her desk had AI on slide one."

This week on Bricks & Bytes we sat down with Jennifer Davis, who recently joined Suffolk Technologies after five years as Managing Director of Techstars Boston, where she reviewed thousands of applications and ran 65+ companies through the program.

She brought the kind of pattern recognition you only get from saying no a few thousand times.

Tune in to find out about:
✅ Why the bar has risen across pre-seed, seed, and Series A — and what VCs now want to see before they write a check
✅ The co-founder mistake that kills more startups than bad ideas (and why 50/50 equity splits are a red flag)
✅ Why "not all money is created equally" — and how founder-unfriendly terms signed early can derail an exit years later
✅ What Jennifer is looking for as she takes the reins on Suffolk's Boost accelerator, and the founder profile she'd most want to back in 2027

Listen on Spotify, Apple, or YouTube 🎧

#aec #construction #constructiontech #bricksandbytes #bricksbytes #ai #vc

Our Sponsors:
BreadCrumb- 50,000+ projects globally. All running safer, faster, with Breadcrumb. - breadcrumb.co
Aphex is the multiplayer planning platform where construction teams plan together, stay aligned, and deliver projects faster – check out aphex.co
Archdesk - “The #1 Construction Management Software for Growing Companies - Manage your projects from Tender to Handover” check archdesk.com

Chapters
00:00 Intro
01:00 Introduction to Jennifer Davis and Transition to Suffolk Tech
04:09 Insights from Techstars Boston
07:01 Key Traits of Successful Founders
10:06 Challenges in the Startup Ecosystem
12:57 The Importance of Problem-Solution Fit
15:57 The Role of AI in Startups
18:51 Generalist vs. Vertical VCs
21:57 Navigating the Built World Space
25:08 The Future of Construction Technology
27:53 Suffolk Tech's Boost Program
31:03 Advice for Founders in the Current Landscape
33:54 Conclusion and Future Outlook

This week in construction: the official verdict on HS2 landed, and it's worse than most people realise. Cost to complete is now £87.7-102.7bn. First services delayed to 2036. Britain is paying 15-20x the European rate per kilometre for high-speed rail.
But the more interesting stories happened underneath it.
Owen breaks down what every construction executive needs to know about three things colliding this week.
One. The AI cost paradox. Per-token prices have dropped 280x in two years. So why are enterprise AI bills exploding? OpenAI just doubled its flagship rate card. Anthropic raised prices without touching the rate card at all. The pricing page is no longer telling you what your bill will look like. And Jean-Marc Shimizu, who runs open innovation at one of Japan's top five contractors, says the subsidy era is ending.
Two. The construction robotics story almost nobody outside venture capital is reading. After sixty years as the last unautomated sector, the robots are finally shipping. Bedrock raised $270m in February. Crewline took $7m as a four-person team with a $26m order book waiting. Rebar tying robots are running at 4-6x human speed. Solar piling, reality capture, and a new category of self-verifying installation robots are all generating real revenue. Plus the corrective on humanoids that most executives haven't heard yet.
Three. HS2 and what it actually means. Three reviews, twelve months, same five conclusions. And the uncomfortable question every leader needs to sit with: is your business built like HS2, or like the alternative?
If you run a construction business, this is the briefing that will reshape how you read the next twelve months.
Plus details on the in-person fireside conversation with Chetan Kotur, the ex-Polestar designer now leading the team rebuilding Laing O'Rourke from the inside. London, 3rd June, evening of Digital Construction Week. Senior exec spaces already filling.
Show notes, references, and the link to sign up for the full newsletter and our Physical AI 2026 research are below:
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1. Event: Re-Engineering The Main Contractor · Luma2. Physical AI and Robotics Report: https://bricks-bytes.com/downloads/physical-ai-robotics-2026/

3. Newsletter: https://bricks-bytes.beehiiv.com/

"Mandating how many AI tokens your engineers burn isn't a productivity metric. It has nothing to do with outcomes."
That's Dustin Devan, CEO of Ediphi and it's one of the sharpest takes on the AI spend debate we've had on the show
This week on Bricks, Bucks and Bytes we're joined by Cameron Page of ClearStory, processing $3.5B in change orders every month, and Sophia Millar of Sonnaball Instruments, catching weld defects in real time before they ever reach inspection.
Tune in to find out about:
✅ Why enterprise AI bills keep rising even as token costs fall
✅ How ClearStory is replacing email-and-spreadsheet change order chaos for 7,500 companies
✅ Why 1.3 million categorised change orders might be construction's most underrated dataset
✅ How acoustic weld detection is transforming prefab quality control
🎧 Listen now on Spotify and YouTube
#bricksandbytes #bricksbucksandbytes #aec #construction #constructiontech #ai
Our Sponsors:
BreadCrumb- 50,000+ projects globally. All running safer, faster, with Breadcrumb. - breadcrumb.co
Aphex is the multiplayer planning platform where construction teams plan together, stay aligned, and deliver projects faster – check out aphex.co
Archdesk - “The #1 Construction Management Software for Growing Companies - Manage your projects from Tender to Handover” check archdesk.com
Chapters
00:00 Intro
00:56 Reunion and Introduction
01:57 AI Tokens and Their Costs
07:57 Managing AI Token Usage
11:21 Balancing Speed and Customer Needs
15:13 Efficiency in AI Usage
20:21 Waymo's Customer Service Incident
21:57 Discussion on Expensive Rail Projects
22:01 The Cost of High-Speed Rail in the UK
26:03 Comparing Costs: What Could $100 Billion Buy?
27:44 Debating Income Tax and Jeff Bezos' Proposal
30:18 The Rise of Trillionaires: Elon Musk's Potential
32:07 Data Centers in Space: A Feasible Future?
35:09 ClearStory: Revolutionizing Change Order Management
42:00 Streamlining Change Order Management
45:36 ClearStory's Market Position and Growth
47:09 Leveraging Change Order Data for Insights
50:01 Innovations in Welding Defect Detection
56:32 The Role of AI in Welding Quality Control

"If you're not tinkering with AI today, it's going to be a problem for you in the future."
This week on Bricks & Bytes we sat down with David Niewiadomski from Zero RFI — KP Reddy's new venture backed by General Catalyst that's rolling up owner reps, advisory, and building data firms under one roof.
Tune in to find out:
✅ Why standalone construction tech software is dying as a business model
✅ What General Catalyst saw in Zero RFI and why services beat SaaS for industry impact
✅ Why owners should never pay a subscription to access their own building data
✅ Why owner rep firms under 50 people are the sweet spot for acquisition
Watch now on Spotify and Youtube. 🎧
#aec #construction #constructiontech #bricksandbytes #bricksbytes #ai #vc
Our Sponsors:
BreadCrumb- 50,000+ projects globally. All running safer, faster, with Breadcrumb. - breadcrumb.co
Aphex is the multiplayer planning platform where construction teams plan together, stay aligned, and deliver projects faster – check out aphex.co
Archdesk - “The #1 Construction Management Software for Growing Companies - Manage your projects from Tender to Handover” check archdesk.com
Chapters
00:00 Teaser
00:47 Introduction to Zero RFI and Its Founders
03:22 The Role of AI in Construction Tech
06:27 Understanding Zero RFI's Unique Approach
09:21 The Importance of Data Integration
11:10 Sponsors
14:12 Acquisitions and Their Impact on Zero RFI
17:34 General Catalyst's Investment and Vision
20:24 Building Works and Its Evolution
23:26 The Future of Construction Technology
25:33 The Evolution of AI in Software Development
26:30 Leveraging Historical Data for Current Projects
29:15 Acquisition Strategies and Scaling Opportunities
32:27 The Future of Construction Firms in a Tech-Driven World
34:53 The Role of Owners in Project Management
36:41 Targeting the Orchestration Layer in Construction
38:51 Differentiating Zero RFI from Other Tech Players
40:29 Envisioning the Future of Zero RFI
41:18 Call to Action for Industry Professionals