PHILADELPHIA, PA — Guthrie AI has raised $4 million in seed financing led by Chicago Ventures to expand a software platform that recruits, trains and manages virtual bid assistants for glazing contractors, targeting labor shortages and administrative bottlenecks in commercial construction estimating.
The funding will be used to expand the company’s engineering team, grow its virtual assistant program and deepen integrations with estimating and productivity software including Bluebeam, Microsoft Outlook and Microsoft Excel.
Guthrie AI combines software automation with trained human assistants who support glazing estimators by organizing bid documents, preparing quote requests and managing administrative tasks before bids are finalized. The company said 52 glazing contractors and vendors nationwide have hired virtual bid assistants through its platform.
According to Guthrie AI, contractors using the platform have reduced bid turnaround times from weeks to days while increasing bidding capacity by as much as 70% without adding estimating staff. Those performance figures were provided by the company and were not independently verified.
Founder and President Ted Baumgardner, a former Marine intelligence officer and glazing estimator, said the company is focused on using software to streamline collaboration between contractors and trained assistants rather than replacing estimators.
“We’re not building a self-driving car. Not yet,” Baumgardner said. “There’s still a person behind the wheel, a real ‘VBA’ who knows how to do a takeoff and price a job the way you need.”
The platform’s artificial intelligence is designed to automate administrative workflows by identifying project scope from bid invitations, routing work to virtual assistants and transferring project information among commonly used estimating tools, according to the company.
Co-founder and Head of Product Tuneer De said the software reduces time spent manually transferring information between Bluebeam, Excel, email and other applications by automating those data exchanges.
Chicago Ventures General Partner Rob Chesney said the investment was driven in part by Baumgardner’s experience in the glazing industry and his understanding of estimating workflows.
The financing marks Guthrie AI’s first disclosed institutional funding round as the company seeks to expand its presence in construction technology focused on specialty trade contractors.
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