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Hi there,
The standard software stack for early-stage design - Revit, AutoCAD, SketchUp, Lumion - costs roughly $733 per user per month. After cataloguing over 1,800 AEC tools, I put together a 10-tool AI stack that does more for $627.
That number matters less than what it represents: the gap between what most practices are paying for legacy tools and what's now available to them is closing faster than most people realise.
This week, three things worth knowing. A stack breakdown. A funding landscape that's heating up. And a brief pause on what building an audience in this space actually means.
Let's get into it. 👇
What Sparked the Most Discussion This Week
1. This week I cross 1,000,000 impressions on LinkedIn
Click here to read the full post: LinkedIn.
2. Revit, AutoCAD, SketchUp + Lumion: ~$733/user/month. My 10-tool AI stack does more, for $627.
Click here to see the full post: LinkedIn
3. 30 ConTech investors are actively funding startups in 2026.
Click here to see the full post: LinkedIn
Theme of the Week
The cost of staying put
Three posts this week. On the surface, they cover different ground - software stacks, LinkedIn metrics, investor activity. But they point at the same thing: the cost of inertia is becoming concrete.
For years, the case for changing your software stack was fuzzy. New tools were promising but unproven. The switching cost was real. The upside was hard to quantify.
That's shifting. When a 10-tool AI stack that spans massing through to knowledge management comes in under the price of four legacy tools you probably already question, the maths changes. The friction of staying put now has a number attached to it.
The funding picture reinforces this. $521M into ConTech in Q1 2026 - the highest since 2021 - isn't a signal that speculative bets are back. It's a signal that the tools are mature enough for institutional capital to move. Funded companies build faster, hire faster, and get embedded into workflows faster. The window between "interesting tool" and "category standard" is compressing.
And the audience question sits underneath all of it. A million impressions means something only if the right people are changing how they think. Directors and owners who read something here and start asking different questions of their software vendors, their teams, or their own assumptions - that's the unit of change that matters.
The cost of staying put isn't just financial. It's the compounding distance between where your practice is and where the tools are going.
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Videos worth watching
5 Compliance Software (part 2 of 3)
AI BOB - Construction is Broken. Let’s fix it
From person-dependent to system-driven. Turn requirements into a single source of truth. Enforced. Measured. Proven. AI–BOB | Eliminate Building Errors
Nomic - Accelerating the design and construction of the built world.
Your firm's knowledge is trapped in drawings, specs, RFIs, submittals, and project systems that general AI cannot reliably use. Nomic - Domain-Specific AI for Architecture, Engineering & Construction | Nomic
Mountup - Avoid the unexpected.
AI-powered compliance intelligence, for Principal Designers, Architects, Project Managers and Contractors. Mountup | Building regulations compliance. Managed, not endured.
MarkedUp - 100,000+ Sheets Audited
Stop building on incomplete sets. Never miss a callout, door tag or sheet again. These errors in your drawings trigger catastrophic rework, procurement delays and margin impacts. MarkedUp | Automated Construction Drawing Audit & Error Detection
LightTable - No surprises. Smarter builds.
Getting started is quick and easy. Just drag and drop your drawings, specs and checklists and let LightTable get to work. LightTable: Quality control for developers and contractors
One Role Worth Noticing This Week
“As BIG deepens its presence in global markets and reckons with the possibilities of artificial intelligence, it seeks a Chief Operating Officer. An executive of rare scope: an operator of unusual discipline, a collaborator of real authority, and a leader comfortably fluent in the technologies now reshaping both the built environment and the organisations that produce it.
Working closely with the CEO and the partner group, the COO will be responsible for the coherent running of the firm across our 7 main offices and additional presences in the world. This is not a role of maintenance, but one of transformation. It calls for a restless appetite for improvement, a systematic mind, and the conviction that operational excellence and creative ambition reinforce rather than oppose one another. BIG wishes to be the most advanced AI-enabled architectural organisation in the world, and the COO will be the principal agent of that ambition.”
→ View role: Here
See all roles here: www.aectechjobs.com/search
What this issue means for practice leaders;
Three things to take from this week:
The stack conversation is no longer speculative. Tools like Arcol, Skema, Finch3D, Gendo and Tektome aren't concepts - they're live, priced and being used in practices now. If you haven't looked at what an AI-first early-stage workflow could cost you, the comparison is worth running.
Funded ConTech moves fast. With $521M deployed in Q1, the companies on that investor list are hiring, shipping, and closing deals. If a tool in your evaluation shortlist is backed by any of those 30 firms, expect it to look materially different in six months.
The 1M impressions milestone is a prompt for practice leaders. Who are you visible to? Are the people who make procurement decisions in your target clients aware of how you think about technology? The practices building that visibility now will have a structural advantage when those decisions get made.
Get in touch: reply to this email or book a call. 30 min with Allister Lewis
This newsletter exists to help architects navigate technology with confidence, not hype by focusing on workflows, decisions, and real practice constraints.
Thanks for reading!
Allister
Richard going a bit mad in the heat …
