---
title: "Vertical AI Reaches the Trades: Probook Raises $40 Million to Automate Field Service Dispatch"
description: Probook has raised $40 million from Andreessen Horowitz and Sequoia to build AI field service management software for the trades as labor shortages bite.
author: Darie Nani (Editor-in-Chief)
date: 2026-06-23T13:03:23.091Z
updated: 2026-06-23T13:03:23.100Z
canonical: https://www.sovereignmagazine.com/article/probook-40m-series-a-field-service-ai
image: https://cdn.nanimediahouse.com/probook-founders.webp
categories: Startups, Artificial Intelligence
content_type: Feature
region: New York City, United States
publication: Sovereign Magazine
about:
  - type: Organization
    name: Probook
    description: Probook is a New York-based software company building an AI operating system for home-service trades such as plumbing, heating and electrical work. Built around dispatch, it automates the matching of jobs to technicians alongside intake, customer messaging and outbound communication. Founded in 2022, Probook raised $40 million from Andreessen Horowitz and Sequoia Capital in 2026.
    url: https://www.probook.ai
    foundingDate: 2022-01-01T00:00:00.000Z
    industry: Field service management software
    sameAs:
      - https://www.probook.ai
---

For most of the past decade, the money chasing artificial intelligence went to the obvious places: software for software companies, tools for marketers, assistants for office workers. The trades, the plumbers, electricians and heating engineers who keep American homes running, were left alone. That is changing. Probook, a New York company that builds field service management software for home-service businesses, has raised $40 million to automate the part of the job that decides whether a service call is profitable, and two of the largest names in venture capital are behind it.

The round comprises a $34 million Series A led by Andreessen Horowitz and a $6 million seed led by Sequoia Capital, which also took part in the Series A. It is an unusually concentrated show of support. The two firms are the biggest and most direct rivals in the asset class, and they rarely back the same young company. Here they have, twice.

## Why Vertical AI Money Is Moving Into the Trades

Probook is part of a wave of so-called [vertical AI companies](https://www.sovereignmagazine.com/article/auctor-20m-sequoia-system-integrators), software built for the specific workflow of one industry rather than sold horizontally across all of them. The thesis behind the category is straightforward. Large, unglamorous sectors that software has barely touched are also the sectors where automating routine work translates most directly into money, because the work is labor and the labor is expensive.

Few sectors fit that description better than the trades. ServiceTitan, the largest software platform in the market, told investors before its 2024 listing that households and businesses in the United States and Canada spend roughly $1.5 trillion a year on trades services. Probook puts the home-services slice of that at around $700 billion, a figure consistent with the wider range industry analysts cite. Yet the operating systems that run these businesses, dispatch boards, scheduling, billing, have changed little in twenty years, and almost none of it uses AI to make decisions.

That gap is what investors are now pricing. Spending on vertical AI startups runs into the tens of billions of dollars a year, and the trades have become one of its busiest corners. Avoca, which builds AI phone agents for home-service firms, raised $125 million at a $1 billion valuation in April. Yelp paid up to $300 million to acquire Hatch, an AI follow-up tool for the same customers. Probook's raise sits inside that pattern rather than apart from it.

## The Skilled Trades Labor Shortage Behind the Demand

The demand has a demographic engine. A report from the property firm JLL in April put the number of [skilled-trades jobs](https://www.sovereignmagazine.com/article/college-graduates-struggle-as-trade-workers-hit-six-figures) that could go unfilled by 2030 at about 2.1 million, with associated economic losses approaching $1 trillion a year. Around two in five construction workers are expected to retire within the decade, and there are not enough younger workers entering the trades to replace them.

For an operator, every unfilled role raises the value of the technicians already on the payroll, and the value of every job they are sent to. Send the wrong technician to a call and it can mean a $300 repair where a $20,000 system replacement was possible, or a missed appointment that a competitor picks up. When labor is scarce, the cost of those mistakes rises. That is the case home services software companies are making to operators, and it is why AI dispatch software, the layer that decides which technician goes where, has become the part of the stack investors are most interested in.

## The Private Equity Roll-Up Creating the Buyers

There is a second force on the demand side. Private equity has spent the past few years consolidating the trades, buying up local plumbing and HVAC businesses and stitching them into large multi-location operators. Goldman Sachs Alternatives acquired Sila Services, a home-services group, in a deal valued at around $1.5 billion. Apollo took a stake in Apex Service Partners at a reported $10 billion valuation. OMERS-backed TurnPoint Services grew into a business worth more than $1 billion in four years.

These owners need standardized, scalable systems across dozens of locations, and they have the budgets to buy them. Several of the customers Probook names, including TurnPoint, Sila and Master Trades Group, are private-equity backed. The roll-up wave, in other words, is manufacturing exactly the kind of buyer that field service management software is built to serve.

## How Probook's Dispatch-First Approach Works

Probook's answer to this market is a deliberate one, and it is where the company differs from most of its peers. The first generation of AI vendors selling to the trades went after the top of the funnel, the inbound call, the missed lead, the follow-up text. Probook started at dispatch instead, the point at which a booked job is matched to a technician.

The company's argument is that dispatch is the hardest problem in the business and the one everything else depends on, so building there first lets the rest of the system share a single view of the customer. On Probook, the company says, a customer stays on one text thread with one number from the first call to the technician at the door; every booking is cleaned before it is assigned, and the software handles the routine cases while staff manage the exceptions. It integrates with the systems of record operators already run rather than replacing them.

The results the company points to come from TR Miller, a Chicago-area heating, cooling and plumbing firm that was one of its first customers. Probook says the shop made an additional $190,000 in HVAC revenue in a single June after adopting the software, alongside a 24 percent rise in average HVAC sale and a 22 percent cut in drive time. Summers Plumbing, Heating and Cooling, with 14 locations and 260 technicians, booked 2,542 jobs in its first month on the platform with no human intervention, according to Probook. Both figures are supplied by the company rather than independently audited, but the customers are checkable.

"With Probook, we've centralized dispatch across 11 markets and 180 technicians without adding overhead," said Chad Peterman, chief executive of Peterman Brothers, an Indianapolis home-services firm. "That kind of scalability is critical to how we grow." Rick Rogers, chief executive of the Florida operator Del-Air, said the firm chose Probook over other vendors "because they know dispatch."

## Who Is Behind Probook

The dispatch-first instinct traces back to the founder. George Eliadis, Probook's chief executive, spent years in the trades before he built software for them, pressure washing homes in upstate New York alongside his father. "I grew up pressure washing in upstate New York with my dad. Six summers in the truck," he said. "I spent two to three hours of my day driving between jobs. I'd be up on a ladder washing a house and miss calls because I couldn't hear my phone ringing." He went on to study engineering and business at the University of Pennsylvania, and founded Probook in 2022 with Ben Cervantez, a former McKinsey consultant he met through Y Combinator's co-founder matching program, and Lewis Zhang.

That background is the company's pitch as much as its product. "Most AI vendors flocked to this space because it looked attractive on a spreadsheet," Eliadis said. "We came to it because we grew up in it. Dispatch is the hardest problem in home services. If you don't start there, you can't understand the business."

## Why a16z and Sequoia Both Invested

For [Andreessen Horowitz](https://www.sovereignmagazine.com/article/why-a16z-just-rushed-25-million-into-furtherai-and-insurance-s-least-sexy-problem), the appeal is the position dispatch occupies in the business. "Dispatch is the nerve center of every home service business, and Probook built their entire platform around it," said David Haber, a general partner at the firm who led the Series A. "It's a years-old structural moat." Haber's investing has centered on AI that wedges into a business by taking over its messiest operational data, then expands from there, and dispatch fits that template.

Sequoia came in earlier and stayed. "Most founders building for the trades have never worked in them. George has," said Konstantine Buhler, a partner at the firm and a vocal proponent of AI built for unglamorous, data-rich industries. "Pair that with the team's outlier technical depth, and you see why we backed Probook at seed and why we're doubling down now."

## What Probook Will Do With the Funding

Probook says it will use the capital to expand its go-to-market team against rising demand and to grow its engineering and customer-success functions. The broader ambition the founders describe is to be the operating system that runs a home-services business end to end, with dispatch at the center, rather than one more point tool bolted onto the side.

Whether a specialist can hold that center as the larger platforms add their own AI is the question the next few years will answer. For now, the trades have gone from a sector Silicon Valley ignored to one where the two biggest venture firms are writing checks into the same company. Probook is betting that the least fashionable decision in the business, who to send and when, turns out to be the most valuable.

## FAQ

**Q: What is field service management software?**
Field service management software runs the operations of businesses that send workers to a customer's location, such as plumbers, electricians and HVAC firms. It typically handles scheduling, dispatching technicians, invoicing and customer communication. Probook builds field service management software focused on the dispatch decision, using AI to match jobs to technicians.

**Q: What does Probook do?**
Probook is a New York company that builds AI software for home-service trades, built around dispatch, the process of deciding which technician is sent to which job. It also handles intake, data cleaning, customer messaging and outbound communication on a single system, and integrates with the platforms operators already use rather than replacing them.

**Q: How much has Probook raised, and who invested?**
Probook has raised $40 million in total: a $34 million Series A led by Andreessen Horowitz and a $6 million seed led by Sequoia Capital, which also participated in the Series A. The company says it will use the funding to expand its sales, engineering and customer-success teams.

**Q: Why are investors backing AI for the trades?**
The trades face a worsening labor shortage, with JLL estimating about 2.1 million skilled-trades jobs could go unfilled by 2030. At the same time, private equity is consolidating local trades businesses into large multi-location operators that need scalable software. Both trends raise the value of automating decisions like dispatch, which is why vertical AI investment has moved into the sector.

**About Probook**

Probook is a New York-based software company building an AI operating system for home-service trades such as plumbing, heating and electrical work. Built around dispatch, it automates the matching of jobs to technicians alongside intake, customer messaging and outbound communication. Founded in 2022, Probook raised $40 million from Andreessen Horowitz and Sequoia Capital in 2026.

[Website](https://www.probook.ai)