Innovation Showcase: How Technology Leaders are using Microsoft for the Next Wave of AI Innovation
Across every industry, artificial intelligence has moved from being a great theoretical idea to being used every day. Organizations are no longer asking whether AI can help them go faster. They want to get their hands on it now.
For industries like construction and capital asset management, this change in attitude represents one of the most exciting and overdue opportunities in technology. Each industry is full of complex, disconnected and unstructured data, characterized mostly by sheer volume. This is one of the last frontiers for digital transformation, meaning AI can make an enormous impact here.
As I get ready for Microsoft Ignite 2025, joining other AI technologists, innovators and enterprise leaders, I’ve been considering what “real-world AI” means when it’s applied in our industry.
Opportunities for AI in construction
At Kahua, we build on Microsoft technologies. as we realize enterprise-grade solutions require trust, security and scalability. To bring innovation to the construction space, we’re using Foundry local to provide local, on-device AI capabilities to our users. We’re also creating MCP accessible tooling within the product to better enable our users to engage with AI that is specific to their environment directly inside of Kahua.
Using local AI, for example, you can take a photo of a defect or incomplete installation and instantly receive AI-powered support without a network connection. Construction and real estate both rely on highly mobile workforces using laptops or mobile devices in the field, where connectivity is not guaranteed.
AI security
Security is a huge concern when processing data with AI. For sensitive construction projects, using public AI services is a non-starter. Using solutions that ultimately make calls to public AI services, which is the same thing as going directly to them, is also not an option.
Kahua has solved for AI security concerns with private infrastructure & local inference.
Kahua has solved the AI security concerns by using a privately hosted environment infrastructure that meets the highest level of security and compliance standards, such as FedRAMP and CMMC. And now, with the introduction of Foundry Local, we have added yet another level of confidence in our security: Your content does not even leave the device. Sensitive project and asset data remains securely on that device and is not sent for processing elsewhere.
Where can you get your hands on AI today?
We’re developing our own best practices at Kahua. The patterns that bring high value and high success have emerged, right alongside the patterns that subtract from what you're trying to deliver. Identifying them and adopting the right patterns is crucial.
Kahua AI was revealed at our recent Enabling Innovation conference. Kahua AI offers automated data collection by extracting information from unprocessed sources such as invoices, equipment nameplates and specification documents. It lets you use voice chat to input information, so you can be sure of accuracy and completeness of record data.
The new kBuilder Canvas solution partnered with Kahua AI also walks the walk. It is an evolution of our kBuilder technology: now a no-code, AI-assisted creation tool for organizations to build and customize their own solutions and integrate outside content like PDFs and project data. If you can imagine it, you can build it in minutes with natural language instructions, using kBuilder Canvas and Kahua AI.
Innovating for a strong future foundation
The most important consideration when using AI: responsible use.
Enterprise use of AI requires a commitment to data integrity, user trust and clear business value. Kahua’s work with the Microsoft ecosystem is an alignment around the principals of secure, transparent and responsible AI.
I’m excited to join other technology leaders to talk about how we’re using responsible, innovative AI—not someday, but today.
That will be the focus of my panel discussion at the session “AI Enterprise Value: Real-World Applications,” happening Thursday 11/20.
If you’ll be at Microsoft Ignite 2025, I hope to see you there! I’ll be sharing how innovations like local inference and context-aware models are helping our customers achieve what they value most: flexibility and control.
