Technology

OpenSpace Unveils the Next Generation of Its Visual Intelligence Platform at Waypoint 2026

Published

1 day ago

September 10, 2026

New Spatial AI, mobile, and progress tracking innovations help construction teams turn trusted reality data into faster, better decisions

SAN FRANCISCO, Sept. 10, 2026 /PRNewswire/ — OpenSpace, the Visual Intelligence Platform for the built world, today unveiled the next generation of its platform at Waypoint 2026, the company’s annual virtual customer event. The new and upcoming capabilities demonstrate how Visual Intelligence is creating a new way to work in construction, moving project teams beyond document-centric workflows toward decisions grounded in visual, real-world data.

In recent years, OpenSpace has become a leading platform that brings together data from 360° cameras, smartphones, drones, laser scanners, BIM models, project schedules and more. OpenSpace enriches that data with location, field context and reality-based progress analytics, making it easier for project teams to coordinate around what is actually happening on-site, communicate across stakeholders, and make faster decisions. This new way of working, with visual reality at the center, is making life easier for field teams, delivering literal ROI, and making AI genuinely more useful for builders.

“Construction doesn’t need another disconnected tool or system that asks teams to manually input information into a form,” said Jeevan Kalanithi, CEO and Co-Founder of OpenSpace. “The next phase of the industry will be defined by platforms that understand the physical world and make that intelligence available wherever teams already work. Today at Waypoint, we demonstrated how OpenSpace is powering a new way of reality-based work, with an open platform that interoperates with the systems and technologies that work best for our customers’ businesses.”

A New Way to Work in the Field
At Waypoint 2026, OpenSpace previewed new capabilities designed to make the smartphone a powerful tool for capturing, understanding, and acting on jobsite reality, reducing administrative work and helping teams move more quickly from observation to action.

The company announced a breakthrough in its Autolocation technology, revealing AI Autolocation 2.0 with Live Location. In construction, location of a photo taken is often the most important, but almost always missing, piece of information. OpenSpace made this a priority to solve for their customers. AI Autolocation works like GPS, but inside buildings where GPS does not operate, and it works without the need to install wireless hardware devices like bluetooth beacons. AI Autolocation 1.0 helped users automatically pin issues created on mobile to their location on a drawing. AI Autolocation 2.0 takes it further, allowing users to understand their position in real time, all the time, powering entirely new field workflows.

The technology powers a new mobile experience called Site Mode, which puts a user’s live location directly on project drawings and BIM models, even when offline, allowing users in the field to instantly access relevant information, open Field Notes and expedite issue workflows based on exactly where they are on the jobsite.

The technology also powers AI Walk-and-Talk, a capability that allows users to create structured updates by speaking naturally as they move through the jobsite. The images and voice are tagged in real time to jobsite locations, providing a rich data set of site status. Walk-and-Talk powers workflows such as daily reports, with OpenSpace compiling the information into an end-of-day report to reduce significant time spent on administrative work.

Verified Progress, Not Opinions
OpenSpace also showcased major advancements to OpenSpace Track, its reality-based progress-tracking solution for projects ranging from multifamily housing to hospitality projects to some of the most complex, high-value and mission-critical projects. OpenSpace Track helps customers verify installed work, compare actual progress with planned milestones, identify schedule risks, forecast future performance, and view trends across multiple projects at the portfolio level.

Due to high customer demand from mission-critical owners and builders, OpenSpace has expanded its progress tracking offerings with new functionality for quantity tracking, markups and predictive analytics. Combined with the power of the full OpenSpace platform as well as optional walk and pilot services, customers are using these capabilities to build faster and more reliably, with visual reality at the center.

The company also announced its Track API, which allows customers to pull progress tracking data into whatever core system a customer uses — ERP, BI dashboards, or PM tools — and drive more workflows in both the field and office. In particular, the company highlighted customers using Track and the Track API to provide accelerated payments to their subcontractors using a shared visual record that all parties can trust, demonstrating literal ROI impact for the industry as a whole.

“For the construction industry, the field is where money is made or lost, yet progress has traditionally been measured through manual updates, periodic observations, and individual judgment,” said Michael Jones, Vice President of Product Management at OpenSpace. “Visual Intelligence replaces opinions with a more objective, timely view of what has actually been completed, which can truly transform the difficult economics of construction. It allows payments and capital to flow more efficiently from lenders to owners to GCs to trades, each and every month.”

Giving AI Agents Eyes on the Jobsite
OpenSpace outlined the next generation of AI built for the “real world” economy. Most AI systems are designed to interpret documents and text. Construction, however, takes place in a physical environment that changes every minute, every day. To provide meaningful value, AI must understand not only what was planned, but also what is truly happening in the real, physical world. This type of AI is often labeled “Physical AI,” and it represents the cutting edge of AI broadly.

OpenSpace announced the new OpenSpace Agent Ecosystem – an open, interoperable AI agent platform that understands what is happening on the jobsite, and can tackle work that teams have to do. OpenSpace leverages its foundation of processing large amounts of visual data, enriching it with location, meaning and high-level analytics, and is now making that intelligence accessible to AI agents to help tackle real work. OpenSpace is building agentic AI technology capable of understanding reality data that is captured, organized, and mapped to the correct project spatial context. Having analyzed imagery from more than 110,000 construction projects representing over 77 billion square feet, with more than 500 million expert-verified labels and descriptions, OpenSpace has built a foundation of real-world visual and spatial intelligence that can help AI understand how construction actually progresses.

This foundation can enable AI agents – in OpenSpace or in a partner system using OpenSpace via MCP – to assist with everyday workflows like daily logs, routine inspections, and clearing punch lists. OpenSpace is already putting this vision into practice, working with a select group of Early Access customers to build and deploy AI agents against real-world construction workflows.

“AI agents need eyes,” said Michael Fleischman, CTO and Co-Founder, OpenSpace. “An agent may be able to read every report associated with a project, and that provides real value. But without visual and spatial context, AI still cannot fully understand the scope of what drives business results for our customers – that data lies in the field. OpenSpace is building that connection between AI and the physical world so agents can become genuinely useful partners to the people delivering projects. This kind of real-world reasoning has been the vision behind OpenSpace from the beginning, and we’re excited to now put that capability in the hands of our customers.”

Throughout Waypoint 2026, OpenSpace customers shared how they are using Visual Intelligence to improve coordination, reduce administrative work, validate progress, deliver literal ROI through accelerated payments, and make faster decisions.

“OpenSpace puts Autodesk Issues front and center with pinpoint accuracy so we can get them resolved faster. The faster we resolve issues, the greater benefit to the project,” said Zeeshan Haider, Director of Business Process, ISEC, Inc. “I worked with one company that could measure job profitability based on the number of days issues stayed open. So, if we can increase the efficiency with which we resolve open issues, that means money to the bottom line. And at the end of the day, that satisfies our customers. They feel like we’re on top of things and getting them done faster.”

Additional information about upcoming feature availability, participation in Early Access and Beta programs, and general customer access will be shared in the coming months.

To watch Waypoint 2026 and learn more about the innovations announced at the event, visit https://www.openspace.ai/waypoint/.

About OpenSpace
OpenSpace is the Visual Intelligence Platform for the built world, helping teams reduce risk and increase efficiency. Powered by Spatial AI, its image-first platform streamlines coordination between field and office teams, providing reality-based, real-time intelligence for faster decisions and fewer delays. Customers like Suffolk, Comfort Systems, and Tishman Speyer rely on OpenSpace to gain critical insights from their sites, avoid destructive investigations, and finish projects ahead of schedule. To date, general contractors, trades, and owners have relied on OpenSpace to analyze imagery on more than 110,000 construction projects across 132 countries. To learn more, visit www.openspace.ai and follow us on LinkedIn.

Media Contact:
Lindsay Hull
Zer0 to 5ive for OpenSpace
openspace@0to5.com
or
media@openspace.ai

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SOURCE OpenSpace

Technology

The World Is Taking Notice: TIME Recognition Fuels VinFast’s Global Journey

Published

36 minutes ago

September 11, 2026

On a rainy Tuesday morning in Paris, a driver waiting at a red light on Boulevard Haussmann might not immediately place the badge on the SUV beside them. Thousands of miles away, a driver in California might have a similar moment seeing the same badge on an American road. It is not German, nor one of the familiar Asian names that have become common across established automotive markets. It belongs to VinFast , a Vietnamese automotive brand that is steadily making its presence felt across Europe and North America, and whose global journey reflects a much larger story unfolding inside its parent group, Vingroup.

PARIS , Sept. 11, 2026 /PRNewswire/ — That journey reached a new milestone this year. Vingroup has been ranked 340th in TIME’s World’s Best Companies 2026, produced jointly with the research firm Statista, placing it among the world’s top 350 businesses and marking a rise of nearly 500 places from the previous year. It is the only Vietnamese company to appear on the list for two consecutive years.

A Ranking Built on More Than Growth

TIME and Statista do not rank companies on size alone. Their methodology weighs three dimensions: revenue growth, employee satisfaction and sustainability transparency. Vingroup earned an overall score of 81 out of 100, rising from 817th to 340th worldwide.

The revenue figures behind that score are substantial. In the first half of 2026, Vingroup posted consolidated net revenue of VND 222.9 trillion, up 72 percent year on year, with profit after tax reaching VND 20.904 trillion, more than four and a half times the figure recorded over the same period in 2025. That growth was driven largely by the Group’s industrial manufacturing and real estate businesses, earning Vingroup an “Outstanding” rating on the revenue metric.

Employee satisfaction told a similar story of momentum. Vingroup climbed to 398th globally, up 496 places, in a workforce that now spans roughly 400,000 people across 12 countries.

On sustainability, the Group’s contribution came through a different kind of infrastructure – green transition projects, urban development, and long-term investment in the systems that sustain a livable city rather than a single quarter’s balance sheet. Vinhomes, the Group’s real estate arm, has extended this thinking through its ESG++ model, adding Regeneration and Resilience to the conventional three pillars of Environmental, Social and Governance work, applied across urban developments spanning thousands of hectares.

Two new business lines added to that picture in 2025: infrastructure, through VinSpeed’s high-speed rail projects connecting Ho Chi Minh City to Can Gio and Hanoi to Quang Ninh, and green energy, through VinEnergo’s projects across multiple provinces. Together, they represent an attempt to build not just individual businesses, but the connective tissue – rail, power and mobility – that a modern, low-carbon economy runs on.

Making the EV Transition More Accessible

Within that broader ecosystem, VinFast represents one of the clearest expressions of Vingroup’s global aspirations. The company’s expansion across Asia, North America and Europe is bringing the Group’s vision for a greener future to an increasingly international audience, while putting a Vietnamese automotive brand directly into competition in some of the world’s most established markets.

For customers considering a new automotive brand, however, global vision is only the starting point. The more important question is whether a new entrant can earn the trust required to become part of everyday life.

Research from the McKinsey Center for Future Mobility offers a useful, if counterintuitive, perspective. Surveying thousands of European car buyers, McKinsey found that Europeans open to considering an Asian market entrant show an overall 53 percent likelihood of switching to a new brand when they move to an electric vehicle – a figure that rises as high as 63 percent in the United Kingdom. Brand loyalty, in other words, is proving more fluid in the EV era than it was in the age of the internal combustion engine.

That shift creates an opening for new EV brands. But winning customers requires more than a competitive vehicle. It requires making electric mobility accessible while building the sales, service and ownership infrastructure that gives customers confidence throughout the ownership journey.

With an increasingly diverse and accessible product portfolio, VinFast remains committed to its mission of making electric vehicles more accessible to everyone and enabling customers to transition to green mobility with greater ease and confidence.

In Europe, the company is expanding its presence with products designed around local priorities of efficiency, design and accessibility, including the VF 6 and VF 8, while electric buses such as the EB 8 and the fully European-certified EB 12 further extend its contribution to the region’s transition toward greener transportation.

Across North America, the same vision is being supported by the expansion of VinFast’s sales and service network and the development of its Certified Pre-Owned (CPO) program. Together, these initiatives are designed to build a more comprehensive ecosystem around the customer, extending beyond the vehicle itself to the services and support that shape the ownership experience.

Vingroup was the first Vietnamese company to qualify for TIME’s World’s Best Companies list in 2025, while VinFast has earned recognition among TIME100 Most Influential Companies and Asia-Pacific’s Best Companies of 2025. These milestones reflect growing international recognition of Vingroup’s and VinFast’s aspirations, capabilities and expanding global reach.

The latest TIME recognition for Vingroup therefore arrives at a moment when that global reach is becoming increasingly visible. For VinFast, the challenge and opportunity now extend across multiple continents , from European cities where a new badge is gradually becoming familiar, to North American roads where the company is building its presence and customer ecosystem.

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Technology

XLCS Partners advises CID Capital on its investment in Kaiser Garage Doors & Gates

Published

37 minutes ago

September 11, 2026

NASHVILLE, Tenn., Sept. 11, 2026 /PRNewswire/ — XLCS Partners, Inc., a leading middle market investment bank, is pleased to announce it served as advisor to CID Capital on its investment in Kaiser Garage Doors & Gates, LLC (Kaiser).

Headquartered in Tucson, Arizona, Kaiser is a leading installer and servicer of residential and commercial overhead doors and gates serving the Phoenix, Tucson, and White Mountains markets. With over 30 years of proven operations, the company has established a strong regional footprint, a reputation for quality and reliability, and long-standing customer relationships.

Based in Indianapolis, Indiana, CID Capital is a private equity firm with decades of experience partnering with high-quality, lower middle market companies. CID makes control investments in companies with a proven track record of success and works alongside management teams to provide strategic guidance, resources, and capital for the next phase of growth, combining a focus on founder- and family-owned companies with a collaborative approach to building long-term value.

Kaiser is the third platform investment made from CID’s latest fund, CID Capital Opportunity Fund IV, L.P. In conjunction with the closing, industry veteran Eric Farley stepped in as CEO to lead the business under CID’s ownership, partnering with Dean Bennett, COO, and the existing Kaiser team.

XLCS acted as buyside advisor to CID Capital in connection with its investment in Kaiser, which was completed on August 14, 2026. The engagement was supported by Jay Cremer, Vice President, and David Silva, Senior Associate.

About XLCS Partners, Inc.
XLCS Partners is a leading global investment banking firm providing M&A advisory services. Visit www.xlcspartners.com for more information.

Media Contact:
Kendra Span
kspan@xlcspartners.com
615-379-7783

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Technology

PlanetiQ Selected for NOAA’s Space-Based Environmental Monitoring IDIQ

Published

2 hours ago

September 11, 2026

Selection builds on PlanetiQ’s long-standing relationship with NOAA and adds thermospheric neutral density to its environmental data offerings

GOLDEN, Colo., Sept. 11, 2026 /PRNewswire/ — PlanetiQ, a leading provider of commercial satellite-based environmental data, today announced that it has been selected as an industry partner under NOAA’s new Space-Based Environmental Monitoring (SBEM) Indefinite Delivery, Indefinite Quantity (IDIQ) contract. Through the SBEM IDIQ, PlanetiQ will be eligible to compete for task orders to provide NOAA with two types of commercial environmental data: Global Navigation Satellite System-Radio Occultation (GNSS-RO) observations for atmospheric profiling and ionospheric monitoring, and thermospheric neutral density data for satellite orbit prediction.

“This selection builds on our long-standing partnership with NOAA and expands the ways our data can support the agency, from high-resolution atmospheric and ionospheric observations to thermospheric neutral density for satellite orbit prediction,” said Ira Scharf, CEO of PlanetiQ.

The SBEM IDIQ, established by NOAA’s National Environmental Satellite, Data, and Information Service (NESDIS) through its Commercial Data Program. The contract has a five-year base period followed by a five-year option and is effective from September 1, 2026, through August 31, 2036.

Under SBEM, PlanetiQ will provide data from its existing satellite constellation as well as additional satellites planned for launch later this year. The company’s GNSS-RO observations provide high-resolution atmospheric profiles for numerical weather prediction and measurements of the ionosphere, including Total Electron Content (TEC) and scintillation. PlanetiQ will also introduce thermospheric neutral density data as a new commercial data product for NOAA NESDIS, supporting improved satellite orbit prediction and space-weather applications.

“PlanetiQ has built its business around delivering high-quality GNSS-RO data with the precision needed to improve weather forecasting,” said Ira Scharf, CEO of PlanetiQ. “This selection builds on our long-standing partnership with NOAA and expands the ways our data can support the agency, from high-resolution atmospheric and ionospheric observations to thermospheric neutral density for satellite orbit prediction. We look forward to continuing to work with NOAA to advance weather forecasting and space weather applications.”

Per NOAA’s own press release, NOAA is expanding its procurement and use of new commercial environmental satellite data streams that will enhance weather forecasting and space weather monitoring. The SBEM IDIQ contract is a key part in the agency’s ongoing effort to boost U.S. weather forecasting capabilities.

PlanetiQ currently provides GNSS-RO data to NOAA NESDIS under the agency’s previous commercial data contract vehicle. The company’s most recent task order, announced in August, provides GNSS-RO and ionospheric data and bridges the transition to the new SBEM contract.

About PlanetiQ

PlanetiQ provides the highest-quality GNSS radio occultation (RO) data available from a commercial constellation of satellites, offering unmatched temporal and spatial resolution. The data drive accurate, high-impact weather and climate forecast models, helping improve Numerical Weather Prediction and AI forecasts, safeguard lives and property from severe weather. In 2025, PlanetiQ was awarded NOAA’s largest-ever contract for satellite weather data, valued at $24.3 million. PlanetiQ is a space-tech company that serves the most mission-critical government, defense, and industry leaders, including international weather agencies, enabling more resilient operations across sectors. Founded in 2015 and privately owned, PlanetiQ designs, builds, and operates the preeminent commercial constellation of GNSS-RO satellites, setting the standard for precision and reliability in atmospheric monitoring. For more information, contact info@planetiq.com

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SOURCE PlanetiQ