Guthrie AI has raised a $4 million seed round led by Chicago Ventures to grow its platform for recruiting, training, and hiring Virtual Bid Assistants for glazing contractors. Virtual Bid Assistants prepares the information, assisting getting quotes back on time, and making sure the proposal is fully covered.
Ted Baumgardner, founder and President of Guthrie AI, said, “We’re not building a self-driving car. Not yet. 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. What we built is the app that makes it easy to hire that person, train them, and work with them every day. Uber never built a car. What they built was the app that makes it easy to find a driver. That’s what we’re doing for glazing contractors.”
The round will fund an expanded engineering team and continued growth of Guthrie AI’s Virtual Bid Assistant program, helping them speed up bidding and cut back on the administrative work that eats into an estimator’s day.
Rob Chesney, General Partner at Chicago Ventures, said, “The hardest thing to find in construction tech is a founder who has actually lived the problem. Ted grew up doing takeoffs in his family’s glass business before serving as a Marine intelligence officer. He knows this trade from the inside and has a tenacious, competitive spirit. If anyone has what it takes to build the complex automations required to support glaziers or the construction trades broadly, we believe it’s going to be Ted.”
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