Earlytrade raises $10M to deploy agentic AI for construction payments, tackling industry delays

Earlytrade raises $10M to bring agentic AI to construction payments

Earlytrade raises $10M to bring agentic AI to construction payments Earlytrade Pty. Ltd., a company solving payments flow for contractors in the construction industry, today announced it raised around $10 million in new funding. Today's capital infusion brings the total raised by the company to $25 million, including an earlier Series A round. The round was led by S3 Ventures and Brick & Mortar Ventures. The company said it would deploy the new funds to expand across the United States and build agentic artificial intelligence into its backend core infrastructure. Construction is one of the last major industries still dominated by manual, paper-heavy payment workflows. Agentic AI promises to autonomously route capital, predict cash-flow needs, and optimize payment timing across thousands of subcontractor relationships simultaneously -- turning payment ops from a cost center into a profit center. In construction, payments normally flow extremely slowly. A property owner needs work done and hires a general contractor to build something. The GC doesn't do all the work themselves; they hire subcontractors - essentially specialists who do jobs such as electrical, plumbing, foundations, carpentry, etc. When the work is complete, the subcontractors submit invoices, and then months later, often 60 to 90 days, they get paid. That's just the industry norm. Essentially, the GC is sitting on money that's already owed to the subcontractor, and the subcontractor has to make it on their own (probably doing more jobs), dealing with payroll, materials and equipment costs in the meantime. Many subcontractors are small businesses, so this wait can be devastating -- sometimes leading to insolvency. It also leads to predatory, dark patterns. According to the company, it doesn't have to be this way. The company built a system where the subcontractors take a discount now and receive a payment now. Let's say it's approximately 2% for the sake of argument. If a GC owes a subcontractor $100,000 in 60 days, Earlytrade can get the sub paid $98,000 today instead of $100,000 in two months. This gives them the working capital to get moving faster. Earlytrade has been light on detailing how it's incorporating AI into its systems. From executive comments and industry standards, we can infer that they will use agentic AI to facilitate autonomous payment optimization, learn subcontractor cash flow, and negotiate between general contractors and subs to suggest and execute early payment offers at optimal times. Agents can also design dynamic pricing: instead of a flat discount, they could negotiate rates in real-time based on project timelines, financial health, local inflation, market conditions, project urgency, predictive assessments, and more. "Strong U.S. growth has made one thing clear: the time is right to make a significant investment in agentic AI within our subcontractor payments marketplace," said Chief Executive and co-founder Guy Saxelby. "We're actively seeking exceptional talent across AI, Product, and Sales." The U.S. Census Bureau construction spending data annual rate shows a seasonally adjusted annual rate of around $2.17 trillion for December 2025. Of that, specialty trade contractors (the subs who actually benefit from Earlytrade) account for roughly $875 billion in annual revenue. According to Worldmetrics, an independent market research platform, 78% of U.S. contractors specifically name labor shortages as their top challenges, as delayed payments squeeze out their ability to pay workers. "Subcontractors value having flexibility in how and when they access capital to support their businesses," said Dave Anderskow, chief financial officer at Power Construction, a general contractor and client of Earlytrade. "Earlytrade's marketplace allows us to invest in our trade partners' growth in a way that is both disciplined and sustainable."

Earlytrade Raises $25 Million to Bring Agentic AI to Construction Sector | PYMNTS.com

The company made this announcement Tuesday (June 9) following its Series A round, saying it was using its capital to expand in the U.S. and add agentic artificial intelligence (AI) into its marketplace infrastructure. Founded in Australia but since re-incorporated in the U.S., Earlytrade's subcontractor payments marketplace is designed to let general contractors trade working capital with their subcontractor base, giving them the ability to secure their supply chains and deliver on projects. "Every dollar that flows through a construction project passes through a payment bottleneck that has never been solved at scale. Earlytrade has built the infrastructure layer that makes agentic AI in this space possible," said Charlie Plauche, whose S3 Ventures led the Series A. "That combination of a proven two-sided marketplace and a genuine AI deployment path is exactly what we look for when we back a category-defining company," Plauche added. As Earlytrade noted in the release, while the American construction industry generates more than $2 trillion in output each year, subcontractors perform a bulk of this work and routinely wait anywhere from 60 to 90 days to get paid. PYMNTS explored this problem in a report earlier this year. "The construction industry builds skylines, bridges and critical infrastructure, yet its own critical financial infrastructure often runs on outdated payment practices," that report said. Research from PYMNTS Intelligence has shown that 70% of contractors and subcontractors report dealing with payment delays on a routine basis, an issue that has become a fixture of the industry's operating model. "In construction's highly fragmented ecosystem, one where developers, general contractors, subcontractors and suppliers form interdependent chains; cash flow disruptions can propagate quickly," the report said. "Subcontractors frequently absorb the greatest shock. Many are forced to front material costs and labor expenses while awaiting payment from upstream partners." Earlytrade said its subcontractor payment marketplace addresses this problem by giving subcontractors control over when and at what rate they access capital owed to them. Meanwhile, the company's new agentic AI exploration comes as the larger construction industry is using the technology into the core of how operations are planned, overseen and carried out, as PYMNTS wrote earlier this year. "What is emerging is not a single 'AI tool,' but an ecosystem of agents, predictive systems and autonomous machines that are beginning to reshape the economics and risk profile of building," that report added. For all PYMNTS B2B coverage, subscribe to the daily B2B Newsletter.