Shackleton AI Unveils Agentic Operating System for Construction, Raises $5 Million Led by Battery Ventures

Company emerges from stealth with an agentic operating system that unifies development and construction and puts AI agents to work across every stage of project delivery

NEW YORK, Nov. 4, 2026 — Shackleton AI, a provider of agentic technology for the construction industry, today emerged from stealth, unveiling its platform that unifies development and construction management workflows and deploys AI agents to automate administrative project work. Launched in June 2026, the Shackleton platform currently manages over $1 billion in project value across more than 15 states for midsize general contractors in multifamily, industrial, and commercial construction, as well as multi-location brands including Red Lobster, Dog Haus and Pepper Lunch.

The company also announced it raised $5 million in seed funding led by Battery Ventures, which it will use to expand the workflows its AI agents can manage and accelerate go-to-market efforts. Brick & Mortar Ventures, Trust Ventures, Correlation Ventures, Motivate Partners, Thayer Investment Partners, Act One Ventures, Brainstorm Ventures, Silence VC and others also participated in the round.

"Construction is one of the largest and least digitized sectors in the economy, and the teams running these projects are buried in manual work that software should have automated a decade ago," said Michael Brown, general partner at Battery Ventures. "The Shackleton team built this platform to run their own business before bringing it to market. We believe their agentic approach is how construction projects will be managed going forward, and we are proud to lead this round."

Solving the Operational Drag Slowing Modern Construction

For many construction teams, critical project information is spread across separate systems for bidding, documents, scheduling and finances. It is not uncommon for a company to juggle seven to 10 systems and have its teams spend 10 to 15 hours a week on data entry and administrative work. Tariffs, higher interest rates and owners pushing for faster rollouts leave little room for that overhead, while legacy construction platforms were designed primarily as systems of record, leaving the follow-up to project teams.

Shackleton was built by founders who lived the problem. Michael Ragheb, Hassan Yasin and Olexandr Kaltsev grew Ernest, a tech-enabled commercial general contractor, to $35 million in revenue across the Southeastern United States, while facing numerous challenges with fragmented solutions.

"I was spending more time moving data between systems than running my jobs at Ernest," said Michael Ragheb, co-founder and CEO of Shackleton AI. "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. Every hour a project manager spends chasing status across disconnected tools is margin lost. When everything lives in one place, projects move faster, teams spend less time on administrative work and projects cost less. With Shackleton, multi-location customers have completed buildouts up to 35% ahead of schedule and as much as 18% under budget."

One Platform for the Entire Construction Lifecycle

For construction firms and developers, the Shackleton platform brings workflows – from site selection and bidding through project turnover – into a single system. AI agents handle many of the administrative tasks that consume project managers' time, including drafting RFIs, following up on overdue submittals, flagging budget variances before payment requests are submitted for approval and converting field notes into daily reports.

Unlike point solutions that automate work within a single application, Shackleton's AI agents operate across the entire platform, enabling teams to coordinate activities across projects and portfolios, while maintaining human oversight through review and approval workflows.

"As we roll out our rebrand across all of our locations, speed and quality are of the utmost importance to our brand. Consolidating our communication and project tracking on Shackleton has kept us on track and on schedule," said Andi Cramer, senior director of construction and rebuild at Red Lobster.

Shackleton is building toward a future in which construction projects can largely manage themselves, bringing the proactive, always-on assistance people are increasingly accustomed to from consumer AI tools into every stage of project delivery.

To request a demo, visit shackleton.ai/demo.

SOURCE Shackleton AI