Technology

For many architects, the hardest part of their job starts after they finish designing a building, when the onerous process of code compliance begins. Written to ensure the safety and accessibility of buildings, codes dictate everything from the height and depth of stairs and where railings end, to the amount of floor space in front of toilets and the height of windows. Regulations are constantly updated, which means that even the most diligent team of architects often miss violations, resulting in costly delays. Y Combinator alumUpCodes wants to help them by using artificial intelligence, including natural language processing, to create what the San Francisco-based startup describes as &the spellcheck for buildings.&

Called UpCodes AI, the program is a plug-in that scans 3D models created with building information modeling (BIM) data and alerts architects about potential issues. It draws on the same backend as UpCodes& first product, an app that compiles regulations into a constantly updated, searchable database with collaboration tools. UpCodes AI, which launched to the public last week, currently supports recent versions of Autodesk Revit and will add ARCHICAD, Sketchup and IFC in the future.

&This is like Grammarly for the construction industry. By highlighting code errors in real-time, the software acts as a code consultant working beside you at all times,& UpCodes co-founder and CEO Scott Reynolds tells TechCrunch.

UpCodes& co-founders Garrett and Scott Reynolds and UpCodes AI technical lead Mark Vulfson

UpCodes was founded in 2016 after Reynolds became so frustrated by traditional code compliance while working as an architect that he switched career paths and launched the startup with his brother Garrett, a former software engineer at PlanGrid, to fix the process.

Building codes change so often that they are sometimes referred to as &living documents.& UpCodes& database draws directly on regulations put online by municipalities and is updated almost in real-time. This eases a major pain point because many architects who thought they had followed regulations find out too late that they missed an amendment. In worst case scenarios, completed work needs to be torn out and rebuilt, potentially costing tens of thousands of dollars. This is a frequent occurrence and Scott Reynolds points to studies by McKinsey and the National Association of Home Builders that cite the complexity of code compliance as a major reason for reduced productivity in the construction industry and rising home prices.

Automating code compliance may also make it easier for architects to expand their practices, since regulations can vary dramatically between jurisdictions. UpCodes currently covers building codes in 26 states and the District of Columbia. Though UpCodes AI is still in its early stages, Reynolds tells TechCrunch that during its private beta it identified an average of about 27 violations per project.

One of its private beta users was Nicholas LoCicero, a designer with CallisonRTKL, an architecture firm known for retail design. LoCicero told TechCrunch in an email that the company used UpCodes AI on two retail locations that needed brand updates. Accessibility, which includes making sure that there are unobstructed ways of exiting a building from any point within it, is one of the most important parts of code compliance, and LoCicero said UpCodes AI was able to flag issues with door clearance, depth on stairs and tread width more quickly than the typical compliance process.

The program &definitely has the potential to save us hours of time with smart egress and accessibility tools and components that will help us develop projects faster during different phases of design& while ensuring that compliance is maintained, he added.

So far, UpCodes has raised $785,000 in funding from angel investors, as well as Y Combinator and Foundation Capital. It now has over 100,000 monthly active users and recently hired Mark Vulfson, former senior manager of engineering at PlanGrid, to serve as UpCodes AItechnical lead.

Though the adoption of BIM data has made planning buildings more efficient, that&only a modest use of BIMfull potential,& Reynolds says. He notes that itjust within the past few years that more than 50% of American architecture firms have started using 3D information-rich modeling instead of 2D modeling. Programs like Revit and ARCHICAD, and new developments in APIs, finally made automated code compliance possible.

The use of AI in architecture is still new, but there are already several companies, including Autodesk and CoPlannery, exploring how to apply AI technologies to solve common problems in design, construction and engineering. Since AI is used in other major industries, including finance and healthcare, to automate compliance, it makes sense to assume that somewhere down the line, another company might try to build a competitor to UpCodes AI.

Reynolds believes that the UpCodes teamcombined industry and technical expertise will give it an edge over future rivals. He says his brother Garrett has a background in diffusion MRI analyzing large 4D data sets, while Vulfson brings &extensive experience deploying client side and web-based products& to the startup. UpCodes also works with a building code consultant who is based in New York City.

&The whole industry of code compliance has been neglected by software engineers for so long that ithard to imagine someone else doing what we&re doing,& Reynolds says.

&Building codes are a creativity killer. These regulations are one of the most restrictive components of design,& he adds. &Imagine restricting every brush stroke an artist makes with ten thousand rules&thatwhat building codes feel like to an architect. Thatwhy I quit my career to do this. I want to take away that frustration and make architecture more fun, like it is in school.&

San Jose-based Cohesity has closed an oversubscribed $250M Series D funding round led by SoftBankVision Fund, bringing its total raised to date to $410M. The enterprise software company offers a hyperconverged data platform for storing and managing all the secondary data created outside of production apps.

In a press release today it notes this is only the second time SoftBankgigantic Vision Fund has invested in an enterprise software company. The fund, which isalmost $100BN in size — without factoring in all the planned sequels, also led an investment in enterprise messaging company Slack back in September 2017(also a $250M round).

&Cohesity pioneered hyperconverged secondary storage as a first stepping stone on the path to a much larger transformation of enterprise infrastructure spanning public and private clouds. We believe that Cohesityweb-scale Google-like approach, cloud-native architecture, and incredible simplicity is changing the business of IT in a fundamental way,& said Deep Nishar, senior managing partner at SoftBank Investment Advisers, in a supporting statement.

Also participating in the financing are Cohesityexisting strategic investors Cisco Investments, Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE), and Morgan Stanley Expansion Capital, along with early investor Sequoia Capital and others.

The company says the investment will be put towards &large-scale global expansion& by selling more enterprises on the claimed cost and operational savings from consolidating multiple separate point solutions onto its hyperconverged platform. On the customer acquisition front it flags up support from its strategic investors, Cisco and HPE, to help it reach more enterprises.

Cohesity says itonboarded more than 200 new enterprise customers in the last two quarters — including Air Bud Entertainment, AutoNation, BC Oil and Gas Commission, Bungie, Harris Teeter, Hyatt, Kelly Services, LendingClub, Piedmont Healthcare, Schneider Electric, the San Francisco Giants, TCF Bank, the U.S. Department of Energy, the U.S. Air Force, and WestLotto — and says annual revenues grew 600% between 2016 and 2017.

In another supporting statement, CEO and founder Mohit Aron, added:&My vision has always been to provide enterprises with cloud-like simplicity for their many fragmented applications and data — backup, test and development, analytics, and more.

&Cohesity has built significant momentum and market share during the last 12 months and we are just getting started.&

Amazon and its grocery store chain Whole Foods announced this morning that savings for Prime members will make their way to ten more stores across the U.S. this week, including Arizona, Georgia, Oregon, North Carolina and Washington, among others. The tie-up gives Amazon shoppers another reason to join the Prime membership program & 10 percent off on-sale grocery items at Whole Foods, and other deeper discounts on a weekly basis.

The discount program was first announced in mid-May, starting in Florida, with promises to soon expand across all U.S. Whole Foods Market and Whole Foods Market 365 stores throughout the summer. Amazon has been making good on that goal, with a rollout to 12 more states, including California, Texas and Colorado later that same month.

The company today says the Whole Foods discounts have reached the following markets: Alabama, Arizona, Arkansas, California, Colorado, Florida, Georgia, Hawaii, Idaho, Kansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri (Kansas City only), Nevada, New Mexico, North Carolina, Oklahoma, Oregon, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, and Washington.

By the end of this week, Amazon says it expects the Prime member savings to reach nearly half its Whole Foods Market stores.

The expansion is moving at a faster pace than planned, it seems.

In the companyannouncement, Whole Foods Market President and COO A.C. Gallo noted that the timeline for the rollout of the Prime savings has been accelerated & something attributed to &positive customer feedback and successes,& it saw over the past month.

However, the reality is that Amazon-Whole Foods is seeing continued competition from Walmart Grocery, which is more affordable without a membership and offers curbside pickup, as well as from other grocery delivery services, like Instacart.

Meanwhile, Target has been expanding its own grocery delivery business, Shipt, across the Southeast and Midwest at a rapid pace as it prepares to go coast-to-coast. And itexpanding its Drive Up curbside service for everyday items, though for now excluding fresh and frozen groceries. The retailer has plans to remodel over 1,000 of its stores, too, in order to better accommodate the new ways people shop & like offering bigger Order Pickup counters and more space for Drive Up orders.

Amazon needs a stake in the grocery business to remain competitive, but it also needed a way to bring Whole Foods& high prices down to drive loyalty, given its reputation for costly groceries. (&Whole Paycheck& was the joke.) Rebranding the price cuts as a Prime member benefit seems to be a good way to go about that.

The savings are available by providing your Amazon accountphone number at checkout, or by using the updated Whole Foods app.

The Whole Foods discounts are also available through Amazon Prime Now delivery in Atlanta, Austin, Dallas, Denver, Los Angeles, Sacramento, San Diego and San Francisco. Two-hour delivery on orders over $35 is free for Prime members, and will reach more cities throughout the year.