With a new CEO speaking and artificial intelligence taking center stage, Procore Groundbreak 2025 in Houston offered a glimpse of a future where leadership transition and technological innovation come together to signal a new chapter for the construction industry.
The event was the last Groundbreak led by Procore founder and CEO Craig “Tooey” Courtemanche, who is due to step down in November. After announcing the arrival of incoming CEO Sharath Chetty, Courtemanche described the moment as a turning point for more than just the company. “This is a new era in smart construction,” he said, “and this is just the beginning.”
At the heart of this evolution is Procore Helix, the company’s intelligence layer, which received a significant update unveiled during the event. The latest release included expanded capabilities for Procore Assist, now equipped with photo analysis for safety and progress tracking, multilingual support in Spanish, Polish, French and Portuguese, and mobile functionality built for field teams.
Also introduced was Agent Builder, now in open beta, which allows users to build task-specific agents using natural language prompts, including RFI generation and daily log reports without coding.
“What we realized was that Procore Assist is just the chat interface,” Courtemanche said. “But there’s so much more to the agent platform we’re building, that we wanted to bring it all under the Helix title.”
The release reflects Procore’s long-term push to build intelligence directly into its platform, rather than relying on third-party integrations. The goal: to improve data consistency between projects while providing secure and scalable tools that adapt to customer needs.
“With the agent revolution hitting, I’m like, wow: we have the platform, we have the technology, we have the connected experience, and now we have the data from a global dataset to help our customers make better decisions,” Courtemanche said.
That sense of momentum framed Courtemanche’s final Groundbreak as CEO, a moment he described as thoughtful and forward-thinking. “When I made the decision to go look for a successor, and that was like September of last year, I saw a path … to connect everyone in construction to the global platform,” he said. “Now I’m seeing everything fall into place.”
While Groundbreak 2025 showed the promise of AI-powered tools and platform innovation, Courtemanche didn’t shy away from the reality that some in the industry may remain hesitant.
“Some (general contractors) are determined not to dive into the digital world,” he said.
However, the message was clear: those who choose to resist change risk being left behind. “The gap is growing,” Courtemanche said. “There’s this new digital divide. The haves and the have-nots, and it’s growing faster.”
