Shackleton AI, a New York software company, came out of stealth on November 4, 2026, with a project management platform for general contractors and owners that runs AI agents on the paperwork. The company says the agents draft RFIs, follow up on overdue submittals, flag budget variances before a payment request goes for approval, and turn field notes into daily reports. It also announced a $5 million seed round led by Battery Ventures. Shackleton says the platform launched in June 2026 and now manages more than $1 billion in project value across more than 15 states.
What it does
On most jobs today, a project engineer logs RFIs and submittals in one system, the superintendent writes the daily report in another, and the project manager checks the budget in a spreadsheet or the accounting package. Shackleton’s announcement says a company commonly runs 7 to 10 such systems, and that teams spend 10 to 15 hours a week on data entry and administrative work.
Shackleton puts those records in one system. Its website lists projects, bids, budgets, RFIs, submittals, change orders and field reports in a single data model. An AI agent here is software that reads those records and prepares the next step, such as a draft RFI or a reminder on an overdue submittal, for a person to approve.
The work moves through the system in the order a job runs:
- Field staff mark up sheets and record walkthroughs on the mobile app. Sheets stay readable and can be annotated offline, then sync when the crew has signal again.
- A field agent turns field notes into daily reports. The homepage demo shows it turning a floor walk’s photos into punch items.
- An office agent drafts RFIs and follows up on submittals that are past due.
- A finance agent flags budget variances before the payment request is submitted for approval.
- The project manager reviews the agents’ work. The release says review and approval workflows keep people in charge of it.
The website names seven agents in all: field, growth, planning, development, procurement, legal, and office and finance. The browser side holds the Gantt schedule and look-aheads.
Shackleton sells to midsize general contractors in multifamily, industrial and commercial work, and to owners that run rollouts across many locations. The release names Red Lobster, Dog Haus and Pepper Lunch as customers.
Evidence so far
The evidence is Shackleton’s launch announcement, its website, and a comment from Red Lobster’s construction lead in the release. The three founders previously grew Ernest, a commercial general contractor in the Southeast, to $35 million in revenue. “I was spending more time moving data between systems than running my jobs at Ernest,” CEO Michael Ragheb said in the release.
These claims come from Shackleton:
- Ragheb said multi-location customers have finished buildouts up to 35% ahead of schedule and as much as 18% under budget.
- The website credits the growth agent with bid turnaround three times faster, and the development agent with a 29% shorter time from concept to construction start.
Andi Cramer, Red Lobster’s senior director of construction and rebuild, said in the release that moving the chain’s communication and project tracking onto Shackleton kept its rebrand rollout on schedule.
The 35% and 18% figures describe the best results, as the words “up to” and “as much as” indicate. The number of projects behind them, the baseline they were measured against, and any RFI or submittal turnaround times are not yet public.
How to measure it on your projects
Track RFI turnaround in calendar days, from the date a field question is first raised to the date the answer reaches the crew. Shackleton’s agents draft the RFI and chase the reply, so log three dates for each one: when the question came up, when the RFI went to the architect, and when the answer was distributed.
| Workflow | Metric | Definition | Baseline to capture |
|---|---|---|---|
| RFIs | RFI turnaround (calendar days) | Date the question is raised in the field to the date the answer reaches the crew | Median and slowest 10% from two or three recent jobs |
| RFIs | Draft acceptance rate | Share of agent-drafted RFIs sent with no edits | None before the pilot; count from the first week |
| Submittals | Overdue submittals | Count of submittals past their required-by date on the log each Monday | Weekly count from a current job |
| Daily reports | Same-day filing rate | Share of daily reports filed before midnight on the day of the work | Last 30 working days on one job |
| Pay applications | Variances caught before approval | Budget variances found before the pay request goes out for approval | Count from the last three pay apps |
Capture a baseline from the RFI and submittal logs of two or three recent jobs of similar size and delivery method. Our post on measuring RFI turnaround before an AI pilot covers setting up that baseline. During the pilot, also count how many agent drafts the project engineer sent unchanged, edited, or discarded, since edited drafts still cost review time.
For daily reports, record the time between the end of the shift and the report being filed, and the share of reports filed the same day. Compare it with the voice-first approach in our post on Punch’s daily reports for superintendents.
A first step on one job: export the RFI log for your most recent closed project and add a column for the date each question was first raised in the field.
Availability and cost
Shackleton takes demo requests at shackleton.ai/demo. Prices are not listed on its website. The agents work on records stored in Shackleton’s own data model, so a contractor would move its RFI, submittal and daily report logs onto the platform to use them. The company says it will spend the seed money on more agent workflows and on sales.