Kojo hits $5B in annual materials orders Micah Rodman steps up as CEO Wesco invests $10M in Kojo Series C extension Kojo named 2024 Top Construction Technology Firm 600+ contractors on Kojo's platform Kojo raises $94M total funding AI software in construction to hit $21B by 2030 Kojo powers 25K+ projects across 47 states Kojo hits $5B in annual materials orders Micah Rodman steps up as CEO Wesco invests $10M in Kojo Series C extension Kojo named 2024 Top Construction Technology Firm 600+ contractors on Kojo's platform Kojo raises $94M total funding AI software in construction to hit $21B by 2030 Kojo powers 25K+ projects across 47 states
YesPress Profile - Construction Tech

Micah
Rodman

The hedge fund analyst who went to fix construction's $2 trillion supply chain.

Co-Founder & CEO, Kojo Yale '15  |  Bridgewater Alumni
Micah Rodman, Co-Founder and CEO of Kojo

Micah Rodman - Co-Founder & CEO, Kojo  //  San Francisco, CA

$5B+
Annual Materials Orders
600+
Contractors Served
$94M
Total Funding Raised
25K+
Projects Powered
2018
Founded
The Story

Running $5 Billion Through a Platform Built for Clipboards

Construction is the world's second-largest industry. It's also one of the last to digitize. When Micah Rodman left Bridgewater Associates - Ray Dalio's legendarily rigorous hedge fund - he didn't head to the obvious ports of call for Yale graduates chasing startup glory. He went to talk to electricians.

Rodman and his co-founders spent six months on jobsites and in supply rooms before building anything. What they found: a $2 trillion industry still coordinating materials orders by phone call, managing deliveries with whiteboard notes, and chasing invoices on paper. Not because contractors were slow. Because nobody had bothered to build the right tools.

Kojo - launched in 2020 as "Agora," rebranded in 2022 - is now that tool. It handles procurement, inventory tracking, vendor comparison, invoice processing, and payment workflows for specialty contractors building everything from hospitals to data centers. In 2025, the platform crossed $5 billion in annual materials orders processed, serving more than 600 contractors across the US and Canada.

"Kojo brings the pen-and-paper world of materials procurement into the 21st century, streamlining the way materials are planned for, ordered, and paid for - reducing costs and saving valuable field time."
- Micah Rodman, Co-Founder & CEO, Kojo

In 2025, Micah Rodman stepped into the CEO role as co-founder Maria Davidson transitioned out of day-to-day leadership. The move positioned Rodman to lead Kojo's next chapter: an AI-powered expansion into data center construction and full procurement automation - a market he believes will be worth $21 billion by 2030.

Quick Facts

Current Role Co-Founder & CEO, Kojo
Education Yale University, B.A. (2011-2015)
Before Kojo Bridgewater Associates (Ray Dalio's team)
At Yale Editor-in-Chief, The Yale Herald
Company HQ 1132 Howard St, San Francisco, CA
Latest Funding $10M Series C extension from Wesco (Sept 2025)
Investors Battery Ventures, 8VC, Tiger Global, Wesco, Schneider Electric, RXR, Suffolk Construction
Industry Focus Construction Tech, AI Procurement, Supply Chain SaaS
Background

From Ray Dalio's Desk to the Construction Site

Yale University
Editor-in-Chief
Led The Yale Herald while earning his B.A. - built communication skills that would later shape how Kojo talks to contractors.
Bridgewater Associates
Manager
Worked directly on Ray Dalio's team at the world's largest hedge fund. Bridgewater runs on radical transparency and systematic analysis.
Kojo - 2018
Co-Founder
Left Bridgewater to co-found what became the leading construction procurement platform. Six months of field research before a single line of code.

Bridgewater is famous for doing things other hedge funds won't: documenting every decision, building systems to eliminate bias, testing every assumption. Rodman walked out of that environment and into the construction industry - and applied the same instincts. Don't assume. Verify. Build systems.

The founding team - Rodman, Maria Davidson, Ryan Gibson, Adam Williams, and Michael Oliver - spent half a year interviewing contractors before writing a product spec. They discovered that labor was 60% of construction project costs and materials were 40%, but materials had almost no pricing transparency. A 3-5% savings on materials across a project's scope could be the difference between margin and loss.

That insight became Kojo's founding logic. Not a marketplace, not a procurement tool bolted onto existing ERP - a purpose-built platform for the workflows that specialty contractors actually use, from the field to the finance department.

Career Timeline
2011-2015
Yale University. Leads The Yale Herald as Editor-in-Chief.
2015-2018
Joins Bridgewater Associates as a management associate on Ray Dalio's team.
2018
Leaves Bridgewater. Co-founds Kojo (then "Agora") with Maria Davidson, Ryan Gibson, Adam Williams, and Michael Oliver.
March 2020
Kojo launches as "Agora" in the electrical trade - weeks into the COVID-19 pandemic. Reaches 100 customers within 18 months.
2022
Platform rebrands from Agora to Kojo. Raises $39M Series C. Expands to eight construction trades. Team doubles to 90 employees.
2023
Kojo powers 25K+ projects across 47 states. Processes $1B+ in orders. Named Fast Company Next Big Thing in Tech.
2024
Platform hits $2B+ in annual orders. Featured in ABC AI Tech Report. Named Inc. Best in Business - Software.
2025
Becomes CEO as Davidson transitions. Raises $10M from Wesco International, total funding reaches $94M. Platform hits $5B annual orders, 600+ contractors.
Building Kojo

How a Construction Software Platform Goes from Zero to $5 Billion

Kojo didn't start with grand ambitions about disrupting construction. It started with a specific, painful problem: electrical contractors placing materials orders with distributors by phone, checking delivery status by calling again, and reconciling invoices against handwritten notes weeks later.

Agora - the original name, a nod to the Greek marketplace - launched in March 2020. The timing was either unfortunate or perfectly ironic: the platform went live weeks into a global pandemic that shuttered much of the physical economy. Construction, deemed essential, kept going. And suddenly, tools that reduced the need for in-person coordination had urgent value.

Key Insight

The Pen-and-Paper Problem

When Kojo's founding team studied construction procurement, they found that materials - 40% of project costs - were being managed without a single dedicated digital tool. Phone orders, fax machines, and Excel spreadsheets were standard. Better pricing transparency alone could save contractors 3-5% per project.

The 2022 rebrand to "Kojo" (Japanese for "factory" or "improvement") coincided with a major platform expansion: from the electrical trade to eight major construction verticals. The same year, the company raised $39 million in a Series C round and doubled its headcount to 90 employees. By November 2023, the platform had powered 25,000+ projects across 47 states and processed over $1 billion in orders.

By 2024, that number doubled to $2 billion annually. By 2025, $5 billion. The scale is significant not just as a revenue story but as infrastructure: Kojo now sits in the middle of supply chains that build hospitals, warehouses, data centers, and commercial buildings across North America.

What's Next

The AI Bet on Construction's Supply Chain

"AI software in the construction industry will grow to $21 billion by 2030."
- Micah Rodman, CEO, Kojo

The $10 million investment from Wesco International in September 2025 - a global B2B distribution and logistics giant - wasn't just capital. It was a strategic bet on Kojo's ability to become the connective tissue between distributors and contractors at scale.

Wesco and Kojo's first joint product, "Project POs," uses AI to simplify complex purchase orders for data center construction - an area of explosive demand fueled by hyperscaler infrastructure spending. The idea: automate the coordination layer between a contractor's materials request and a distributor's fulfillment systems, eliminating the manual data entry that causes delays and errors on large projects.

For Rodman, who spent years at Bridgewater learning to build systems that remove human error from high-stakes decisions, the product direction is a natural fit. Construction is a domain where one missed delivery or misread invoice can cascade into days of project delay and thousands in rework costs. AI doesn't just speed things up - it removes the friction points that cost the most.

With Rodman now as CEO and the company backed by a who's-who of industrial and venture investors - Battery Ventures, 8VC, Tiger Global, Schneider Electric, RXR, and Suffolk Construction - Kojo is positioned to go from construction procurement software to the operating system for how North America builds things.

Milestones

What's Been Built

$ $94M in total funding from Battery Ventures, 8VC, Tiger Global, Wesco, Schneider Electric, RXR, and Suffolk Construction
5B $5B+ in annual materials orders processed through Kojo's platform across the US and Canada
600 600+ contractors using Kojo for procurement, inventory, and invoice management
25K 25,000+ construction projects powered by Kojo across 47 US states
$30M $30M+ saved for customers on materials orders as of November 2023
8 8 construction verticals served, expanded from a single electrical trade focus in 2020
🏆 Fast Company Next Big Thing in Tech award (2023) and Inc. Best in Business - Software (2024)
🔥 Speaker at SMACNA, MEP Conference, ENR Future Tech and other major construction industry events
$5B
Annual Orders
150
Employees
47
States Covered
$21B
Construction AI by 2030
Things to Know

The Details That Stick

01
Before building software for hard hats, Rodman was managing money at Bridgewater Associates - one of the world's most analytically demanding organizations.
02
He was Editor-in-Chief of The Yale Herald, making him one of the few construction tech CEOs whose professional roots include journalism.
03
Kojo launched in March 2020 - during the first weeks of COVID lockdowns in the US - and still hit 100 customers within 18 months.
04
The company launched with just the electrical trade. It now covers eight major construction verticals, from mechanical to concrete.
05
Rodman and the founding team spent six months interviewing contractors before writing a single line of product code.
06
Kojo started as "Agora" - the Greek word for marketplace. It rebranded to "Kojo," drawing on the Japanese concept of the factory floor as a site of precision and continuous improvement.
Profile Depth

What Micah Rodman Actually Does

The Operator

Rodman spent his first years at Kojo as Chief Operating Officer - not CEO. The decision to have Davidson lead externally while he ran internal operations was deliberate. At Bridgewater, he'd learned that great organizations build systems, not hero narratives. Kojo's early growth reflected that: process-heavy, customer-research-driven, expansion only after proving unit economics in each new trade category.

His transition to CEO in 2025 came as the company matured past its growth-stage playbook and into a phase that required product direction and external positioning. The company now speaks publicly about AI-native procurement - a vision Rodman has been building toward since before it became a buzzword in construction circles.

The Industry Voice

Rodman has been a regular speaker at construction industry events: SMACNA, the MEP Conference, ENR's Future Tech summit, and the ENR Groundbreaking Women in Construction conference (which he moderated). That last one - a panel on women reshaping the built world through technology - is a telling choice for a CEO running a company in an industry where less than 11% of the workforce is female.

His public commentary has focused on a single consistent thesis: AI in construction will be transformative, not because it replaces people, but because it removes the friction that keeps field teams from doing their actual jobs. Every hour spent chasing a purchase order status is an hour not spent building.

Personality

What Makes Him Different

Most construction tech founders come from construction. Rodman came from finance and editorial. That combination - quantitative rigor from Bridgewater, narrative instinct from journalism - shows in how Kojo talks about itself and how it builds. The platform is data-dense but contractor-friendly.

The Wesco Partnership

Strategic Bet, Not Just Capital

The $10M from Wesco International in 2025 brought a global B2B distributor into Kojo's cap table - and into its product roadmap. "Project POs," their joint AI tool for data center construction, is a signal of where Kojo is heading: not just managing procurement but automating it end-to-end, from initial materials request through jobsite delivery confirmation.

Go Deeper

Links & Sources

usekojo.com LinkedIn Profile @micah_rodman Kojo on LinkedIn Crunchbase Profile MEP Conference Speaker Contrary Research: Kojo Kojo Press Room