Noetic featured on KVUE: Austin using AI to review permit applications
KVUE, Austin's ABC affiliate, spoke with Noetic CEO Heidi Laki this week about the city's push to use AI to clear permitting friction. A February city memo cited by KVUE noted that staff had to reject 85% of recent applications — and every rejection adds time, cost, and uncertainty to projects that the region needs to keep housing attainable.
The city's Development Services has been working with Austin-based startup Noetic since early 2026, according to a memo released last week, to build an AI tool to speed up the process.
As Taylor Jackson, CEO of the Home Builders Association of Greater Austin, told KVUE, those delays land squarely on residents: "For every $1,000 a home increases in price, it prices out about 1,000 people or 1,000 families." Catching issues before submission — rather than through repeated rejection cycles — is how Noetic helps engineers, cities, and ultimately homebuyers and renters share in the savings.
As Heidi put it to KVUE:
I think this is just the beginning in ways that we might think about applying AI to construction.