Geo Week News sat down with OpenSpace CEO and co-founder Jeevan Kalanithi for an in-depth interview on how visual intelligence is reshaping the construction industry. The piece covers OpenSpace’s origins in AI and computer vision research, the platform’s growing scale across billions of square feet of captured data, and Kalanithi’s thesis that spatial AI represents a foundational shift in how construction projects are documented, managed, and ultimately financed.
At OpenSpace, we have always believed that construction deserves technology built for the realities of the jobsite, not for office desks. This coverage captures why visual intelligence matters right now: for the first time, AI and computer vision can make sense of physical site conditions in near real time. Our platform processes captured walkthroughs in an average of 15 minutes, automatically locates observations on drawings without GPS, and feeds accurate progress data directly into the tools teams already use, including Procore and Autodesk. With over 69 billion square feet of images captured and roughly 30 million new images uploaded every week, our AI systems are trained on a dataset with no equal. That scale is what allows our customers to replace manual, opinion-based reporting with automated, fact-based intelligence they can act on.
The broader implication of this coverage is one we think about every day: visual intelligence is becoming a foundational layer of construction software. Just as project management platforms and ERPs became standard practice, a verified visual record of what is actually happening in the field is fast becoming non-negotiable for owners, contractors, and lenders alike. When project stakeholders have access to real-time site data, the economics of construction can shift: risk is priced more accurately, payments move faster, and disputes are resolved with evidence rather than memory. This is the transformation OpenSpace exists to drive.
By: Abigail Hart
