drywall
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The Quiet Holding Company Behind America's Walls, Ceilings and Firewalls
A private, people-first investment firm in suburban Kansas City has spent two decades assembling a coast-to-coast family of specialty construction companies - and betting that patient ownership beats the quick flip.
California Drywall Co.
California Drywall Co. is one of the largest wall-and-ceiling specialty contractors in the United States, building interiors and exteriors across Northern California since 1946. From its San Jose base it delivers drywall, lath and plaster, metal framing, cold-formed steel engineering, fireproofing, acoustical ceilings, rainscreens and prefabricated wall panels for landmark projects including Apple Park, Levi's Stadium, SFO Terminal 2 and major hospitals. In August 2023 it became a 100% employee-owned company through an ESOP, putting equity in the hands of its roughly 700 team members.
Paul Gutierrez
Paul Gutierrez is President and Chief Executive Officer of California Drywall Co., the San Jose-based specialty contractor that ranks among the largest wall-and-ceiling firms in the United States. In August 2023, he led the company's transition from third-generation family ownership to a 100% employee stock ownership plan, a structural rewrite of a 77-year-old business with roughly 700 employees.
Canvas
Canvas builds worker-operated robots that finish drywall on commercial construction sites. Its flagship machine, the 1200CX, sprays and sands joint compound to Level 4 and 5 finishes in roughly two days instead of five, has finished close to a million square feet to date, and was acquired in 2025 by JLG Industries (an Oshkosh Corporation company) to scale across interior construction.
Kevin Albert
Kevin Albert is the Founder and CEO of Canvas, the world's first robotic drywall finishing company. A mechanical engineer with roots at Boston Dynamics - where he contributed to the legendary BigDog and LS3 quadruped robots - Kevin built Canvas to bring heavy-machinery-grade precision to the interior of buildings for the first time. With over 20 years of rugged robotics experience spanning Draper Lab, Otherlab, and his own inflatable-robot startup Pneubotics, he channeled a career's worth of know-how into solving one of construction's most stubborn productivity problems: drywall finishing hasn't changed in decades, and with two workers retiring for every one who enters the trades, Canvas's robots are becoming the industry's answer.