Construction Technology
Trunk Tools Removed From Procore API Access, Groundbreak Attendance Refunded
Popular Agentic AI platform says it still wants to return to construction management platform's marketplace
TrunkText’s AI can find project information in response to natural language questions, calling up the relevant data.
TrunkText images courtesy of Trunk Tools
In what is sure to be the first of many disputes between construction technology vendors offering agentic artificial intelligence services for contractors and a major platform that those same contractors use for construction management, agentic AI provider Trunk Tools, saw its access to the Procore platform's application program interface denied in September and its booth at Procore's Groundbreak conference in October was refunded by the construction management platform provider.
Procore says the dispute is merely due to it updating its API terms and conditions as well as introducing a new Developer Policy on Sept. 30. In a statement, Procore said the changes are "being implemented to protect the integrity and security of all our customers' data as AI quickly reshapes the technology landscape. This evolution requires formalizing security and data usage standards for third parties who want access to the Procore API via our marketplace, and includes requirements that are standard in SaaS [software as a service] marketplaces."
Popular construction data integration platform Agave notified Trunk Tools and many other startups that to continue using its construction data connector in conjunction with Procore's API that they had to change that practice to comply with Procore's new terms of service. Trunk Tools says it did so in early October but was still not granted marketplace status after making what the company thought were necessary changes, including agreeing to augment its use of Agave.
"We applied for marketplace status on the day that they alerted us, which was a few weeks before Groundbreak and every other startup got approved on the marketplace to our knowledge, besides us," Sarah Buchner, founder and CEO of Trunk Tools said.
At Grounbdreak Oct. 14 to 16, Procore unveiled Agent Builder, a beta for agentic AIs that uses natural language similar to many of Trunk Tools AI agents. Procore said in answers to ENR that its policies apply to all third-party vendors that want to use its marketplace and its commitment to customer data remaining customers' is unchanged.
"This change will help ensure a higher quality user experience. As we evolve with AI and new capabilities, our partner integrations must also evolve. These new standards create a stable foundation and provide a more consistent and reliable experience for users," it said.
Procore's terms of service now state that marketplace partners cannot bulk download data from its platform for commercial purposes, including the training of 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 that data to be used with consent for training purposes.
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Trunk Tools, in a statement to its customers, said it will support Agave until Dec 1 and a compliant short-term fix for the lack of API access to Procore's platform and a long-term fix to continue using their AI agents with Procore's platform will be released by Dec. 1. It also said the company "firmly believes your data is yours — no third party should limit your access and use of your own data," in its statement.
At least one major contractor that uses both platforms is trying to broker an agreement between the two companies. Attorneys from 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 might assert their abilities to reserve the right to determine what tools can and cannot be used with their platforms via APIs, the question of data ownership is ultimately between contractors and designers and their clients.
"If a vendor is saying data becomes Microsoft's because it gets uploaded to Sharepoint, that argument probably won't go very far, legally, but whether a work product a contractor makes is owned by that service provider or the client they are being paid to do so for, could be a thornier issue," one attorney said.
