In the restoration world, most contractors are still running million-dollar operations with a patchwork of spreadsheets, phone calls, and “hope the crew got the message” management. It’s like showing up to a fire with a garden hose, technically possible, practically insane. That’s the gap Albi stepped into, and it is why the Chicago-based startup just locked in an undisclosed Series B growth investment led by Frontier Growth, with Partner Dave Pandullo joining the board. This is not a vanity raise; this is fuel for a platform already redefining how property damage restoration gets done.
Founded in March 2020 by CEO Alex Duta and CTO Shamoil Soni, Albi wasn’t dreamed up in a WeWork brainstorm over cold brew. Alex built and scaled an eight-figure restoration company in Chicago before deciding the industry’s tech tools were stuck in the flip-phone era. Shamoil brought the engineering chops to turn that lived pain into a mobile-first SaaS platform that runs the entire restoration business lifecycle, from job intake to invoicing, with the speed and clarity the industry never had. That combination of street-level experience and engineering precision is why Albi went from pandemic launch to Y Combinator acceptance to enterprise adoption in just a few years.
The market has noticed. Enterprise customers like Guardian Restoration Partners, United Water Restoration Group, Cowan Group in Australia, and major franchise networks now run operations on Albi. Whether it is field crews documenting moisture maps in real time on Albi Mobile, or back offices reconciling payments through Albi Pay, the system does what industry veterans never thought software could do: make contractors more profitable without slowing them down. That traction is why Frontier Growth came in, and why earlier backers like Palm Drive Capital, Takeoff Capital, and Y Combinator will be watching closely.
This Series B is aimed squarely at scaling the platform’s enterprise muscle. Albi Core, Mobile, and Pay will keep getting sharper, with deeper analytics, tighter multi-location management, and tools built for the PE-backed aggregators reshaping the restoration landscape. With around 70 employees and customers on multiple continents, the team is positioned to ride the wave of industry consolidation while giving smaller contractors the kind of operational firepower usually reserved for national players.
In an industry built on fixing what’s broken, Albi is doing the same thing, just for the business itself. And if you think that sounds ambitious, you’re right. But then again, ambition is the only restoration job that never ends.
