Drones fly the site. The software does the thinking - turning ground data into earthwork answers for land developers and homebuilders.
Every land developer knows the feeling. The grading plan looks balanced on paper, then the dirt tells a different - and expensive - story. Moving earth is one of the largest and least predictable costs in getting land ready to build on, and for decades it was estimated with survey stakes, spreadsheets and a lot of professional guesswork.
TraceAir Technologies was built to replace that guesswork with data. Founded in Seattle in 2015 by Maria Khokhlova, Dmitry Korolev, Alexander Solovyev and Nikita Ushakov, the company flies drones over construction sites, captures the ground to millimeter accuracy with LiDAR, and runs the cut-and-fill math automatically. What used to take weeks of field survey and manual calculation arrives on a dashboard.
The drone, notably, is not the point. Data capture has become cheap and commoditized. TraceAir's value lives in what happens after the drone lands - the earthwork analysis, the stormwater reports, the grading verification, and the portfolio view that lets an executive see forty sites at once.
That focus has earned it a quiet but commanding position. The platform is used by roughly 300 builder accounts and by 17 of the top 20 U.S. homebuilders, including D.R. Horton, Lennar, Howard Hughes and Meritage Homes, across more than 40 states and Canada.
"This funding will enable us to accelerate our mission of transforming the land development and homebuilding industries through radical transparency."
— Maria Khokhlova, Co-founderTraceAir is a site-intelligence platform. It sits across the full project lifecycle - from evaluating land before purchase to verifying vertical construction - so builders make decisions from a current, accurate model of the site rather than a stale plan.
Cut-and-fill imbalances, grading errors and stormwater surprises quietly drain land-development budgets. Most are invisible until a crew is already moving dirt.
Drone + LiDAR capture builds a millimeter-accurate 3D model. Software quantifies earthwork and flags problems while they are still cheap to fix.
Builders find cost savings hidden in the grading plan, cut report turnaround from weeks to hours, and see every site in one portfolio view.
A connected suite that follows a project from land acquisition to final delivery.
Millimeter-accuracy ground capture and up-to-date 3D site models from routine drone flights.
Automated quantification of earthwork and cut-and-fill balancing to control dirt-moving costs.
Automated stormwater and environmental-compliance documentation for active sites.
Lot-yield estimation and overlay planning tools for land acquisition and pre-development.
360-degree interior scanning to verify progress during vertical construction.
Multi-site oversight dashboards plus AI-driven predictive analytics, funded by the Series B.
"TraceAir's commitment to leveraging AI and machine learning aligns perfectly with our investment thesis."
— Tony Fedorov, Flashpoint Venture CapitalThe 2024 Series B - the company's largest round - funds predictive-analytics products and market expansion.
LEAD: PeakSpan Capital · WITH: Flashpoint Venture Capital · EARLY BACKERS: Y Combinator, Metropolis VC
Four co-founders launch the company to bring drone-based site intelligence to construction.
Ivan Lvov joins as Chief Strategy Officer; earthwork and cut/fill analytics take shape.
Layout Generator and land-acquisition tools broaden the product beyond site capture.
360-degree interior capture extends the platform into vertical construction.
PeakSpan Capital leads a round to fund predictive analytics and market expansion.
The long-time strategist takes over as CEO to scale global growth.
Land developers and homebuilders - from national giants to regional builders - across the U.S. and Canada.
In 2025 TraceAir named Ivan Lvov CEO. He joined the company in 2016 as Chief Strategy Officer - the person who validated the market ended up running the company.
"TraceAir has demonstrated exceptional growth and innovation in an industry ripe for disruption."
— Phil Dur, PeakSpan CapitalProduct walkthroughs and company videos live on TraceAir's channels.
Search TraceAir's YouTube presence and site for the latest earthwork and portfolio demos.
Watch on YouTube →Product tours, customer stories and announcements on the official website.
Visit traceair.net →It provides a site-intelligence software platform that turns drone and LiDAR data into earthwork analysis, grading and stormwater reports, and portfolio-wide visibility for land developers and homebuilders.
Land developers and homebuilders across 40+ U.S. states and Canada, including 17 of the top 20 U.S. homebuilders such as D.R. Horton, Lennar and Howard Hughes.
About $36.85M total across five rounds, including a $25M Series B in 2024 led by PeakSpan Capital.
TraceAir is headquartered in Seattle, Washington, and was founded in 2015.
Ivan Lvov, who joined in 2016 as Chief Strategy Officer, was appointed CEO in 2025.
Sources: traceair.net, PR Newswire, GeekWire, PeakSpan Capital, Crunchbase, Tracxn, ZoomInfo. Figures are approximate where noted.