As artificial intelligence starts to reshape industries from finance to healthcare, it’s also beginning to reconfigure how Texas contractors find their next big project. Case in point: Mercator.ai.
It’s been one year since Mercator.ai expanded into the Lone Star State, and the firm’s business development platform for general contractors is gaining significant traction. Boasting seven of the 10 biggest contractors in Texas as clients, Mercator.ai has been growing by leaps and bounds since it achieved statewide coverage in May of this year.
“Over the last basically eight months now, we have generated $12 billion in top-of-funnel early project detection for our general contractors that use our product today,” said company co-founder and CEO Chloe Smith, speaking with CandysDirt.com.
The platform uses artificial intelligence to collect real-time data that serve as early indicators of development activity, giving users a heads up on potential projects before formal bidding processes kick into gear. Such indicators include rezoning applications, title transfers, permitting, and site plan submissions, among others. Mercator.ai takes those signals and integrates them to present a picture of the contracting opportunities in a given area, leveraging data points from government portals and industry partners.
“Mercator does all of that, but the real power behind it that helps our customers is that not only can we help them detect early project opportunities, but we can also help them know who’s part of those early opportunities,” Smith said. “We’re able to kind of stitch together the relationship network that exists in construction.”
Perhaps it won’t be long before the traditional business development strategy of word-of-mouth networking is behind us. According to Smith, Mercator.ai customers are served up reports that can tell them who’s doing what, where, and for how much in their market.
“We’re able to do that all programmatically through AI and help them identify projects,” she said.
The startup originated in Canada just five years ago, and it’s got ambitions to grow. Maybe you wouldn’t expect it, but Texas was an ideal testing ground for market expansion.
“There’s 40 million people in Canada, and there’s 30 million people in Texas, and they all live within a three-hour radius of one another. That really helps in terms of being able to create a product where we can see statewide impacts versus working kind of across a country that’s so broad and wide, where you can’t see the kinds of cross-country impact as well in the early stages of a startup development,” Smith said.
Mercator.ai’s system covers a 70-mile radius around each major metro area in the Lone Star State, including the D-FW. In addition to the relative compactness of Texas compared to Canada, Smith’s platform is benefiting from the state’s blockbuster growth.
“We’re seeing a lot of out-of-state developers come in and bring their own teams,” Smith said. “At the same time, long-established local contractors are looking for ways to future-proof their business development as the next generation takes over.”
Customers can use the platform to filter project types, monitor heat maps of development activity, and set alerts for new leads.
“This tool is very much for hunters, specifically in the private space,” Smith said. “We’re giving early signals to these clients that there’s movement happening here … and then also giving them access to the profiles of those individual companies.”
Smith said Texas has become a blueprint for Mercator.ai’s expansion into other markets in the United States. The company has raised $5 million in venture funding and quadrupled its team in the last few years. It plans to expand into Florida and California in 2026.
