From “Impossible to build” to $650M Projects: How LeanCon Is Reinventing Construction Planning with AI
From growing up on dusty building sites to closing deals with America’s top builders, the founders of LeanCon are proving that AI can finally modernize construction.
Construction may be one of the world’s oldest industries, but it’s also among the slowest to modernize. Despite trillions invested globally each year, the sector still struggles with systemic inefficiencies: billion-dollar projects planned and managed on spreadsheets, coordination handled manually, and decisions driven more by intuition than data. While AI has already reshaped finance, healthcare, and retail, construction has largely been left behind. That’s the gap LeanCon is determined to close.
Ziv Levi, CEO & Co-Founder of LeanCon, recalls a project where months of meticulous planning collapsed in just one week, when changes in the pre construction phase sent the team back to square one. Timelines slipped, budgets broke, and the entire workflow had to be rebuilt from the ground up. “The system just isn’t built for this level of complexity”, he says. “That’s why we decided to rebuild it - with AI”.
The company is building what they call the world’s first AI-powered pre construction engineering team. Tasks that once took eight months and dozens of engineers now take just seven minutes - no humans involved. The platform runs millions of “what if” scenarios and instantly recommends the optimal plan to its users. Those capabilities are already live on a $650M New York project, where a single change, like shifting a wall, triggers an instant recalculation of the entire schedule, logistics, construction methods, costs, and more. It’s a huge leap forward that transforms pre-construction from educated guesswork into a science of optimization, probability, and data-driven certainty.
Turning “Impossible” into Partnerships
Ziv’s passion for construction started early, spending summers on job sites alongside his father. Sapir Tubul, Co-Founder and CTO, grew up with the same backdrop - his father was a general contractor who exposed him to the day-to-day headaches of planning and managing projects. Both eventually became engineers, but their DNA was construction long before it was technology. That lived experience with the industry’s pain points is what gives LeanCon’s solution its credibility.
Their first careers weren’t in Silicon Valley - they were on real construction sites, planning and managing multimillion-dollar projects, solving scheduling nightmares, and witnessing firsthand how fragile timelines and budgets can be. “Construction projects are simply too complex to plan optimally”, says Ziv. “It takes too long, and the mistakes we make cost billions every year - everyone pays the price”.
When they first approached Phil Bernstein, Deputy Dean at Yale’s School of Architecture, former VP of AEC at Autodesk, and one of the industry’s most respected voices - his response was blunt: “It’s hard for me to believe anyone could build such a technology”. Instead of backing down, they went back to work. Nine months later, they returned with a working MVP, which was successfully deployed in a live project in Manhattan. The result? Bernstein not only changed his mind - he joined the mission and became an advisor, investor, and key connector, he even helped open doors within Autodesk itself. It’s a pattern they’ve come to know well: skepticism → proof → adoption → partnerships.
From Cold Outreach to Mega-Deals
Before there were pilots and partnership decks, there was good old-fashioned discovery. Ziv and Sapir spoke with everyone involved in pre-construction - not just general contractors, but also banks, insurers, architects, and private-equity players, to truly understand how decisions are made. Only then did they start outreach.
Breaking into the US market wasn’t about splashy campaigns or glossy conferences. It came down to persistence, precision, and one well-placed message. A cold LinkedIn note to a pre-construction director at a mid-sized contractor, who later became head of pre-construction at one of America’s largest GCs - became the catalyst. One conversation led to a pilot, then to a strategic partnership. Today, that GC plans over 3,000 projects a year, and LeanCon is helping them plan faster, smarter, and more efficiently.
Beyond individual partnerships, LeanCon’s impact is starting to ripple across the broader US economy. By eliminating costly inefficiencies, the platform helps developers and contractors reduce project costs, improve profitability, and take on more work - creating new opportunities for both skilled and on-site labor. The software is also being explored for use in infrastructure and public-sector projects, where better planning can prevent budget overruns and protect taxpayer funds.
“I believe LeanCon’s solution could significantly advance academic research within the construction industry in the US”, says Dr. Lufan Wang, one of the company’s earliest investors and a globally respected voice in AI and construction. “It allows us to understand construction at a level of complexity and scale we couldn’t before”.
For Ziv and Sapir, the journey from a single LinkedIn message to multi-million-dollar deals proves their core belief: construction doesn’t need more noise - it needs clarity, proof, and persistence.
💡 Lessons from LeanCon’s Journey
Deep roots matter. Ziv and Sapir didn’t need to “study” construction from the outside; they grew up in it. That gave them credibility when talking to industry veterans and the intuition to spot which problems were worth solving.
Prove the “impossible”. When experts dismissed their idea as unrealistic, they didn’t argue - they built. Ziv’s founder takeaway: when someone senior says “it can’t be done”, if you can do it, you’re probably staring at a huge opportunity.
Markets reveal themselves through people. They didn’t rely on consultants or theory. They spoke with stakeholders across the ecosystem - project engineers, district managers, GCs, financiers, to learn how decisions really happen.
Capital is more than cash. They chose investors who opened doors, not just wallets. The right backers accelerated trust and adoption, paving the way into mega-projects.
Patience scales better than panic. In slow-moving industries, quick wins don’t last. Focus, consistency, and a long-term view turned persistence into traction.
About LeanCon
LeanCon is building the world’s first AI-powered pre construction engineering team. Their technology automates project planning for general contractors and developers, transforming what used to take months and millions into a fully automated, seven-minute process. The result: 20% shorter schedules and a dramatic drop in planning costs - from $1.5-2M per project to near zero. With over 90% accuracy, LeanCon delivers in minutes what was once considered impossible. By empowering pre-construction teams to manage 100x more projects per year, enabling them to win more bids with superior planning accuracy, complete financial clarity, and zero guesswork. Its technology is also being adopted for public-sector projects and academic research, further amplifying its economic and societal impact.
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