Kaya AI developing construction AI with Amazon Rufus dev
Mukesh Jain will serve as chief technology officer at the startup
Startup Kaya AI has brought on Mukesh Jain, the former Amazon AI leader behind the etailer’s Rufus AI assistant, to be its chief technology officer, marking a shift of top-tier AI talent into the construction sector. Kaya is a workflow automation platform built specifically for construction, architecture, engineering, and real estate development teams.
Jain previously built Rufus into a real-time decision engine that served hundreds of millions of Amazon users and led to more than $12 billion in commercial impact, according to a Dec. 11 Kaya release. Kaya is applying that level of enterprise AI capability to construction, a growing but still largely undigitized, trillion-dollar industry driven by demand for data centers, clean-energy projects and semiconductor facilities.
At Kaya, Jain will oversee development of Amber, a domain-trained AI “knowledge worker” built for construction workflows, according to the release. Amber can read drawings, specifications, submittals, RFIs, supplier quotes, schedules and equipment data, unifying them into a project graph for decision-making.
The company is also launching its Mission-Critical Procurement Planner, a tool powered by a small language model trained on construction metadata, according to the release. The system links design intent, availability and logistics to address procurement delays, one of the biggest drivers of cost overruns in mission-critical builds.
Kaya’s technology reduces friction by providing insight from design through installation, according to the release. The platform has been developed with contractors including Suffolk, Haskell and ARCO Murray, and adoption is growing among builders seeking faster, more predictable project execution.
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