AI for Trades

AI for Trades was an exclusive afternoon for professional trade contractors on the future of AI in construction, hosted by Brick & Mortar Ventures and Pelles AI. It ran talks and AI implementation roundtables, followed by networking over gameplay, food, and drinks.

July 9, 2026, from 1:30 – 6:30 PM PT, at Topgolf San Jose in San Jose, CA.

Yael Meretyk Hanan (CEO & Co-Founder, Pelles AI) gave the opening remarks. The talks: “The State of AI” by Kaustubh Pandya, General Partner, Brick & Mortar Ventures; “How to Practice Safe AI” by Kevin Soohoo, Head of Global AEC Practice, Egnyte; “Build Something Only You Can — Transforming Your Knowledge Into AI Assets” by Dan Stokes, Director of Estimating, Southland Industries. AI implementation roundtables followed.

Brick & Mortar Ventures and Pelles AI hosted the event. Its premier partners were Ferguson, Fieldwire by Hilti, Egnyte, United Rentals, and Heavy Metal Summer Experience.

The event was exclusively for professional trade contractors. It was free to attend; registration was required and subject to approval.

Pelles AI surveyed attendees before the program started. Those answers, the roundtable discussions, and the Southland Industries case study became The State of AI in the Trades, a report on how AI is being adopted across the trades, available at pelles.ai/state-of-ai-in-the-trades.

Pelles is a Trade Operating System: AI that runs your projects the way your best people would — on your own drawings, specs, and contracts, not on general knowledge. Pelles Core covers the everyday work: DoubleCheck answers questions straight from your documents with the source shown, Compare matches revisions across drawing sets and summarizes every change, Reports produces proposals, pre-bid RFIs, BOMs, and change orders in the templates you already use, and Agents work in the background against your standards. From there your team builds its own apps and agents around the workflows it already runs.