Ajei Gopal Introduced as Next CEO
With a new CEO stepping in and artificial intelligence taking center stage, Procore Groundbreak 2025 in Houston offered a glimpse into a future where leadership transition and tech innovation came together to signal a new chapter for the construction industry.
The event was the last Groundbreak led by founder and longtime Procore CEO Craig “Tooey” Courtemanche, who is set to step down in November. After announcing the arrival of incoming CEO Ajei Gopal, Courtemanche described the moment as an inflection point for not just the company. “This is a new era in intelligent construction,” he said, “.. and this is just the beginning.”
Central to that evolution is Procore Helix, the company’s intelligence layer, which received a significant upgrade unveiled during the event. The latest rollout featured 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 unveiled was Agent Builder, now in open beta, allowing users to create task-specific agents using natural language prompts, including RFI generation and daily log reporting without the need for coding.
“What we realized was that Procore Assist is just the chat interface,” Courtemanche said. “But there’s so much more on the agentic platform that we’re building, that we wanted to put that all under the caption of Helix.”
The rollout reflects Procore’s long-term push to embed intelligence directly into its platform, rather than rely on third-party integrations. The goal: improve data consistency across projects while delivering secure, scalable tools that adapt to customer needs.
“With the agentic revolution that hit, I’m like, wow—we have the platform, we have the technology, we have the connected experience, and now we have the data across 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 both reflective and forward-looking. “When I made the decision to go seek out a successor—and that was like September of last year—I saw a path … to connect everybody in construction on the global platform,” he said. “Now I’m seeing everything falling into place.”
While Groundbreak 2025 showcased the promise of AI-driven tools and platform innovation, Courtemanche didn’t shy away from the reality that some in the industry may remain hesitant.
“Some (general contractors) are adamant they’re not diving into the digital world,” he said.
However, the message was clear: those who choose to resist change risk falling behind. “The gap is growing,” Courtemanche said. “There’s this new digital divide. The haves and have-nots—and it’s growing faster.”
