ZenaTech has signed its first paying customer for an AI data center construction project and expanded its drone-based monitoring software to track earthwork β the grading, drainage and cut-and-fill volumes that define the first, often overlooked phase of building a hyperscale campus.
The company announced Aug. 13 that its ZenaWorx platform now includes digital terrain modeling, adding to the 3D progress-monitoring software it introduced for data center construction sites in May. The new capability uses drone-mounted LiDAR and photogrammetric sensors to build a digital ground-surface model of a job site, then tracks elevation, slope and grading changes against engineering plans throughout the earthworks phase β the stage where contractors move dirt, set grades and install drainage before any structure goes up.
“The AI data center construction market represents one of the largest infrastructure buildouts in a generation, and speed plus data quality and precision translate directly into cost and schedule savings,” ZenaTech CEO Shaun Passley said in the announcement. ZenaTech did not name the customer or disclose the size of the initial contract, describing it only as its first paying customer for a data center building project.
The digital terrain modeling feature remains in beta and is delivered through ZenaTech’s Drone as a Service division alongside its enterprise software business, a structure designed to generate recurring subscription revenue across a project’s lifecycle rather than a one-time software sale. ZenaTech, which trades on Nasdaq under the ticker ZENA, builds autonomous drones and offers drone-as-a-service and enterprise software across North America, Europe, the Middle East and Asia.
ZenaTech cited third-party research projecting the global digital elevation model market will grow from about $3.8 billion in 2026 to $10.04 billion by 2035, an 11.4% annual growth rate the company attributed largely to survey demand from public works and government projects β a market ZenaTech is now positioning its data center-specific tools to capture alongside its existing government and infrastructure customers.
The product launch lands squarely in the middle of a data center construction boom that has strained land, power and labor markets nationwide. Data center construction has been pulling skilled labor away from housing projects, and separate research has found data center developers outbidding homebuilders for land at what builders call “impossible prices.” Tools like ZenaWorx that promise to compress construction timelines and cut costs are aimed directly at contractors racing to keep pace with that demand without expanding headcount as fast as project volume is growing.
What it means: Earthwork verification is a narrow niche within construction technology, but it sits at the very start of the data center build timeline, where delays or grading errors can cascade into costly schedule slips months later once structural and electrical work begins. Landing a first paying customer β even an undisclosed one β gives ZenaTech a reference case to sell the same subscription model into a construction segment where hyperscale developers and their general contractors are under intense pressure to compress timelines, making earthwork verification tools a plausible wedge into a much larger addressable market if the beta product performs as promised at scale.
