In what is sure to be the first of many disputes between construction technology vendors that offer artificial intelligence services for contractors and a major platform that those same contractors use for construction management, agent AI vendor Trunk Tools was denied access to the Procore platform’s API in September and its booth at Procore’s Groundbreak conference in October was refunded.
Procore says the dispute is solely due to an update to its API terms and conditions, as well as the introduction of a new developer policy on September 30. In a statement, Procore said the changes “are being implemented to protect the integrity and security of all our customers’ data as AI rapidly reshapes the technology landscape. They are standard across SaaS [software as a service] markets”.
Popular build data integration platform Agave notified Trunk Tools and many other startups that use its build data plugin in conjunction with the Procore API that they needed to change that practice to comply with Procore’s new terms of service. Trunk Tools says it did so in early October, but has yet to be granted market status after making the changes the company felt were necessary, including agreeing to stop using Agave.
“We applied for marketplace status the day we were alerted, which was a few weeks before Groundbreak and every other startup that we know of was approved in the marketplace besides us,” said Sarah Buchner, founder and CEO of Trunk Tools.
At Grounbdreak on October 14-16, Procore introduced Agent Builder, a beta version for agent AI that uses natural language similar to many of Trunk Tools’ AI agents. Procore said in responses to ENR that its policies apply to all third-party providers that want to use its marketplace, and its commitment to remaining customer data is unchanged.
“This change will help ensure a higher quality user experience. As we evolve with AI and new capabilities, our partner integrations must evolve as well. These new standards create a stable foundation and provide a more consistent and reliable experience for users,” he said.
Procore’s terms of service now state that marketplace partners cannot download bulk data from its platform for commercial purposes, including training large language models. Trunk Tools’ AI agents are trained using construction-specific data, and it has agreements with many of its own enterprise customers to allow this data to be used with consent for training purposes.
Trunk Tools, in a statement to its customers, said it will support Agave until December 1st, and that a short-term solution to support the lack of API access to the Procore platform and a long-term solution to continue using its AI agents with the Procore platform will be released on December 1st.
At least one major contractor that uses both platforms is trying to broker a deal between the two companies. Lawyers at a major law firm that represents both construction owners and contractors said disputes like this will become more inevitable as both designers and contractors adopt agentic AI into their workflows, and that while vendors may assert their ability to reserve the right to determine which tools can and cannot be used on their platforms, the question of data ownership is ultimately between contractors and designers
“If a vendor says that data becomes Microsoft because it’s uploaded to Sharepoint, that argument probably won’t go very far, legally, but if a work product that a contractor does is owned by that service provider or the client they’re being paid to do it for, it could be a thornier issue,” said one lawyer.
