Novaclad Launches AI-LiDAR Measurement Engine for the Building Trades, Starting With a Free App That Measures a Kitchen in Five Minutes

Built inside a working stone shop, it is the first product of the Fabrication Cloud — homeowners to local fabricators, measured and priced before anyone visits

ST. LOUIS, Sept. 23, 2026 /PRNewswire/ -- Novaclad today released the first consumer product built on its AI-LiDAR measurement engine: a free iOS app that lets a homeowner measure their kitchen with an iPhone, price a countertop from a real catalog, and hand the job to a local fabricator in about five minutes. It is the first of its kind and the first piece of the company's Fabrication Cloud.

Custom fabrication — countertops, cabinetry, tile, millwork — is a large corner of residential construction still run on tape measures and quotes that arrive days later as one number. Novaclad's engine captures a room in three dimensions with the iPhone's LiDAR sensor, then applies a model trained on how a working shop reads a kitchen to produce a fabrication-grade takeoff and an itemized price from the shop's own price book. The fabricator receives a lead already measured and specified.

The engine was not built in a software lab. Co-founders Ryan and Audrey Brown left corporate careers in 2022 to buy Rock Creek Granite, an Imperial, Missouri, shop cutting stone since 2013 — and built Novaclad on its floor.

"We saw automation coming for the industries we came from and asked where it was needed and nobody was looking," said Ryan Brown. "Fabrication has a material-waste problem and a measurement problem. Both are software problems now."

"We didn't automate the craftsman," said Audrey Brown. "We automated the two weeks of waiting in front of him. The saw still happens. What's gone is the guesswork."

Novaclad launches in St. Louis with Rock Creek Granite as founding fabricator and places one fabricator per market through its Founder-Partner program. Countertops are the first surface; the engine is built to extend to other fabricated finishes.

The app is free; homeowners pay their fabricator for the work. It requires an iPhone 12 Pro or newer Pro model on iOS 17 or later: novaclad.com/app.

About Novaclad
Novaclad LLC is a St. Louis construction-technology company founded by Ryan and Audrey Brown, part of the Fourfold Futures venture studio. novaclad.com 

SOURCE Novaclad