Shackleton AI Raises $5M to Unify Construction Workflows

By Daniel Okafor

Shackleton AI said it raised a $5 million seed round led by Battery Ventures after emerging from stealth. The New York-based startup named Brick & Mortar Ventures, Trust Ventures, Correlation Ventures, Motivate Partners, Thayer Investment Partners, Act One Ventures, Brainstorm Ventures and Silence VC as other participants. Shackleton AI said the round also included other investors.

What problem is Shackleton AI targeting?

Shackleton AI said construction teams commonly manage seven to 10 separate systems, while employees spend 10 to 15 hours each week on data entry and administrative work. The company said that administrative burden can affect project timelines and profitability.

Shackleton AI said it built a platform that unifies development and construction management workflows. It said the aim is to automate project administration and improve operational efficiency for construction companies. For buyers, the pitch is a capacity gain: reduce recurring administrative work while keeping project information in one place.

How do its agents differ from single-app tools?

Shackleton AI said its agents operate across a shared platform and coordinate activities between project teams and portfolios. The startup contrasts that scope with specialized software tools that automate workflows only within individual applications. Its claim is practical: a task that stays inside one application cannot travel across a contractor's teams and portfolios unless the platform coordinates the handoff.

Michael Ragheb, one of the founders, said: “Once we saw how much this was costing us, and how many other builders were dealing with the same problem, we knew we had to start from scratch and bring everything into one place.”

Who built Shackleton AI?

Shackleton AI said Michael Ragheb, Hassan Yasin and Olexandr Kaltsev founded the company after building Ernest, a technology-enabled commercial general contractor. Ernest generated $35 million in revenue across the Southeastern United States. The company links that operating experience to its focus on reducing administrative work that can slow projects and erode profitability.

Shackleton AI described Ragheb as an entrepreneur and executive with experience in construction and healthcare technology. He previously founded and led Elemy, a technology-enabled healthcare platform that digitized and scaled the delivery of applied behavior analysis (ABA) therapy. The company said Elemy grew into one of the largest providers of the service in the United States.

Ernest covered commercial construction, while Elemy covered healthcare service delivery through technology. Shackleton AI supplied both histories as context for the founders' focus on reducing construction administration.

How large is the platform today?

Shackleton AI said it launched in June 2026 and currently manages more than $1 billion in project value across more than 15 states. The figure denotes project value under management rather than Shackleton AI revenue or valuation.

Its customers include midsize general contractors in multifamily, industrial and commercial construction, along with multi-location brands such as Red Lobster, Dog Haus and Pepper Lunch.

The customer mix spans project-based contractors and repeat-location operators. In both cases, Shackleton AI says its common platform coordinates work across teams and portfolios instead of confining automation to one application. That makes project administration the unit of workflow the platform is designed to improve.

What does Battery Ventures bring?

Shackleton AI described Battery Ventures as a global investment firm founded in 1983. It backs companies across application software, IT infrastructure, consumer internet, mobile services and industrial technologies. The firm invests from seed and early-stage financing through growth equity and private equity.

Shackleton AI pairs seed capital with a footprint of more than $1 billion in project value across more than 15 states. Its strategic test is whether shared agents can reduce the reported 10-to-15-hour weekly administrative burden. The next measure is whether contractors convert that capacity into faster project timelines and stronger profitability, the outcomes the startup has identified.