Trunk Tools

Trunk Tools is a New York-headquartered company that sells an AI agent platform for the construction industry. Its software ingests the unstructured document set generated across a project lifecycle — drawings, specifications, RFIs, submittals, schedules, contracts, procurement logs, meeting minutes, field reports and bids — and structures it so that general contractors and their trade partners can query it in natural language and receive sourced answers. The company positions the platform as a purpose-built alternative to general-purpose AI tools, arguing that construction's proprietary data, jargon and multi-party workflows require vertically tailored reasoning models [1][5][6].

The product line is organized as a platform (marketed as "Cortex") plus a set of workflow agents. TrunkText is a Q&A agent that connects to document repositories and returns answers in under 30 seconds. TrunkSubmittal is a discrepancy-detection agent that reviews submittals against project specifications, flags missing, conflicting or noncompliant information, and drafts follow-up actions and emails; an associated Submittal Register feature extracts submittal requirements from a spec book, builds a product hierarchy and publishes the log back to Procore or Autodesk Forma or to CSV. TrunkReview uses vision language models to scan drawing revisions and produce a visual overlay and written list of clouded and unclouded changes. TrunkRFI identifies duplicate or unnecessary RFIs and drafts the ones that are needed, updating status in the project management system. TrunkBid extracts and compares scope-of-work documents and subcontractor bids, surfacing gaps, exclusions, alternates and follow-up questions [0][1].

The company frames its approach as "Intelligence Augmentation" — supplying field and office staff with the right information rather than replacing them — and says it employs veteran construction professionals alongside its AI team [1][3].

Founding story

Founder and CEO Dr. Sarah Buchner grew up in a small village in Austria and worked as a carpenter from age 12 to support her family. She moved from carpentry into general contracting, working as a superintendent, project manager and group leader on projects across Europe, and became the first in her family to pursue higher education, earning a PhD in civil engineering and data science. A fatality on one of her jobsites and her doctoral research motivated her to apply technology to construction safety and productivity. She subsequently attended Stanford Graduate School of Business in Silicon Valley and founded Trunk Tools in 2021 [3][5][6].

Business model

Trunk Tools sells software to construction firms, including enterprise agreements with large general contractors (an enterprise agreement with Suffolk is listed among its company updates). The product is delivered as a platform with multiple add-on workflow agents that integrate into customers' existing project management systems [0][4].

The sources do not describe pricing or contract structure beyond references to enterprise agreements with contractors [4].

Traction

Trunk Tools said in July 2025 that it was deployed on hundreds of construction projects and had scaled revenue 5x over the prior six months. Its website cites more than 500 live jobsites, over $50 billion in construction volume, 87% verified field accuracy and 90% of submittals reviewed automatically. Named customers and testimonial sources include Cleveland Construction, Suffolk, Gilbane Building Company, Haskell, Charps and AMLI Residential [0][4][5][7].

Latest developments

The website is currently promoting Cortex and the five workflow agents it powers. Recent company-listed items include an Autodesk Forma integration (May 2026), an enterprise agreement with Suffolk (March 2026), the launch of TrunkBid extending the product into preconstruction (March 2026) and the launch of TrunkReview (February 2026). News listings also reference a VentureBeat article stating the company's stack cut document review from 60 days to 10 by ditching general-purpose models, a Crunchbase profile of Buchner, an Autodesk Digital Builder blog mention for AU 2026, and a podcast appearance [0][4].