News & Updates
Company milestones, product updates, and the story behind Slab Labs — from early research to the tools ADU builders use today.
Product
·March 27, 2026
Strata v0.5.0 is a major product release focused on making the workspace more usable for real projects. This version improves the guided planning experience, strengthens estimate creation and price comparison, expands permit and map support, improves project document handling, and tightens beta operations. The result is a more reliable and more structured workflow for homeowners, builders, and design partners using Strata on active jobs.
Industry
·March 9, 2026
The ADU market is growing fast, and builders need software that actually understands construction — not generic project management tools repurposed for building. The best ADU construction software should offer real cost estimation grounded in actual project data, not benchmarks or guesswork. It should generate construction schedules that reflect how ADU projects actually flow. It should help with feasibility, permitting, and scope tracking. And it should be built by people who've worked in construction, not just in tech. Strata by Slab Labs was built from the ground up for ADU projects, powered by 400,000+ real data points from actual ADU builds across the United States. Whether you're a homeowner planning your first backyard unit or a builder managing a pipeline of ADU projects, the right software can save months of planning and thousands in avoided mistakes.
Product
·March 4, 2026
After months of private testing with ADU builders and homeowners, Strata is now available to all users. The public beta includes AI-powered cost estimation, schedule generation, scope tracking, and a full estimate editor — all grounded in 400,000+ real data points. Free accounts include a 7-day trial with full access to every feature.
Product
·March 1, 2026
The first private preview of Strata launches with a small group of invited ADU builders and homeowners. Core features include conversational AI estimation, data-backed cost estimates, and structured estimate extraction from natural language. Early feedback shapes the final beta experience.
Engineering
·February 2026
After extensive iteration, we removed six stacked post-processing correction layers from the estimation pipeline and replaced them with a single-pass extraction model. The result: more accurate estimates with better transparency. The principle — give the model good inputs, trust its output — now defines how Strata generates every estimate.
Engineering
·Late 2025
The foundational systems come together — an AI research pipeline that grounds every answer in real project data, a full estimate editor with version control and diff-based saves, and AI-generated construction schedules with Gantt and calendar views. The architecture is built for accuracy, not speed-to-market.
Research
·2023
Years of research into real construction outcomes culminates in a proprietary dataset covering costs, timelines, and outcomes from actual projects across the United States. This dataset becomes the foundation that Strata's AI is built on. Every estimate, every answer, every recommendation traces back to real project data.
Company
·2022
Caskcade is formally established as the parent company behind what will become Slab Labs. The team begins focused research into construction data pipelines, cost estimation models, and how AI can bring real transparency to an industry that's traditionally relied on guesswork and contractor ballparks.
Research
·2017 – 2022
The founding team — with backgrounds in aerospace and defense manufacturing and commercial construction — begins years of conceptual research into construction machine learning. The question driving the work: can AI learn to understand construction costs and planning the way an experienced builder does? Data generation, model iteration, and deep domain research lay the groundwork for everything that follows.
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