Acquisition expands Shovels’ platform to unify government meeting decisions with permit data, giving customers earlier insight into local development.
LAFAYETTE, CA, UNITED STATES, January 7, 2026 /EINPresswire.com/ — Shovels, leader of building permit intelligence, today announced its acquisition of ReZone, an AI company that tracks city and local government meeting decisions. The acquisition expands Shovels’ platform beyond permit and contractor data to include comprehensive local government intelligence, giving customers earlier visibility into development activity.
The acquisition makes Shovels the only company to unify meeting records with permit data, delivering the earliest possible insight into development activity. Customers can now access early-stage intelligence—zoning changes, project discussions, and approval timelines—months before projects break ground. Details of the deal were not disclosed.
“ReZone started with a simple thesis: Real estate is—and will always be—a local business. The direction of our built environment is not driven by big decisions in Washington but by thousands of little decisions made every month by city councils and planning boards. ReZone takes unstructured city data and provides it to those who build and invest in our cities. Together with Shovels, we can scale that mission faster and get insights into more hands than we ever could alone,” said Daniel Heller, Founder of ReZone.
Heller and Brad Hargreaves, co-founder of ReZone and founder of Thesis Driven, will join Shovels as advisors, supporting the company’s expansion into new local government data categories.
“We make public data public,” said Ryan Buckley, CEO of Shovels. “Local government data is public by law but inaccessible by design. By adding ReZone’s meeting intelligence to our permit and contractor data, we’re aggregating information from thousands of jurisdictions and delivering the complete story of development projects, from first proposal to final certificate of occupancy.”
A Complete Picture of Local Development
Shovels’ expanded platform will enable customers to:
* Track projects from inception: Monitor city council agendas and meeting minutes to identify developments in early planning stages
* Connect discussions to permits: Link proposed projects to filed permits as they move through the approval process
* Anticipate market movements: Gain visibility into infrastructure decisions, such as data center proposals and mixed-use developments that increase housing density, before ground is broken
This full-lifecycle visibility is particularly valuable for enterprise customers making major infrastructure decisions, including site selection for data centers, fiber deployment planning, and real estate development. The acquisition comes as demand for local government intelligence accelerates, particularly in these sectors where early visibility into proposed projects can inform billion-dollar investment decisions. Shovels’ unique combination of meeting transcripts and permit data provides customers with insights unavailable from any single data source.
Continued Growth and Market Momentum
The acquisition comes as Shovels builds on strong momentum following its $5 million seed round in mid-2025. Since closing the round, the company has tripled revenue and expanded from a team of six to eleven employees.
To support its continued growth, Shovels has made several recent strategic hires, including Matt Drobick, formerly of ATTOM Data, as its VP of Sales.
The company has secured contracts with Fortune 500 companies across telecommunications, technology, and home building sectors, driven entirely by inbound demand as enterprises seek clean, structured data to power billion-dollar infrastructure decisions.
For existing ReZone customers, the transition to the Shovels platform will be seamless. All current services and data access will continue without interruption. Over the coming weeks, Shovels will integrate ReZone’s features into its comprehensive platform, providing existing users with access to Shovels’ full suite of permit intelligence and contractor data. The combined team is committed to ensuring a smooth experience and will be in direct communication with all ReZone customers regarding platform updates and new integrated features.
About Shovels
Shovels is the intelligence layer for the built world. The company aggregates, cleans, and structures building permit data and government meeting records from thousands of U.S. jurisdictions, making previously inaccessible local government information available through a web interface, API, and enterprise data licensing. Learn more at shovels.ai.
Morgan Friberg
Shovels
morgan@shovels.ai
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