Trayd raises $10M Series A led by White Star Capital, bringing total funding to $15M. Its construction payroll platform cuts processing time from 14 hours to 27 minutes while handling union rules, multi-state taxes, and compliance. Targets a $2T U.S. construction market.



NEW YORK, March 25, 2026- Trayd has announced a $10M Series-A fundraising round for its construction payroll and workforce solution platform, enabling the rapidly-growing company to accelerate product development and national expansion. Led by White Star Capital, this round brings total funding to $15M, with follow-on investments from Suffolk Technologies and Y Combinator, and a new strategic investment from RXR, the New York-based real estate and technology investment firm.

Founded in 2021, Trayd’s all-in-one back-office operating system is specifically tailored for specialty trade contractors, offering payroll, HR, scheduling, and field tracking tools. The platform factors in wage calculations by trade type, state versus federal or private project scope, multi-state tax obligations, tax adjustments, compliance reporting, union rules, and more. Since launch, Trayd has reduced average weekly payroll processing time from 14 hours to 27 minutes, enabling efficient workforce deployment for its customers by returning almost a full two days of labor in the back office each work week.

"Before Trayd, we spent up to 12 hours a week just fixing timesheets, with manual errors happening roughly 17% of the time," said Nate Lewis, Owner of United General Contractors. "Trayd consolidated three different platforms into one, allowing us to manage 300% growth in our field staff with absolutely no additional administrative costs and no added headaches," added Field Operations Manager, Archie Goldsmith.

“The construction industry depends on financially strong, operationally sound trade partners to deliver projects successfully,” said Diana Kay, Partner at Suffolk Technologies. “Payroll is the core workflow that keeps these businesses running, and one of the hardest to get right. By modernizing payroll, Trayd is unlocking meaningful productivity gains and building the foundation for more efficient, resilient, and transparent operations across the industry."

The funding comes at a pivotal moment of growth for Trayd, and at a time of significant economic and compliance pressures on the construction industry. The U.S. construction market generates $2 trillion annually, where specialty trade contractors outnumber general contractors 400 to 1, yet legacy technology has been built primarily for GCs, leaving a massive gap that Trayd was purpose-built to fill. Since its founding in 2021, Trayd has quadrupled its team size and achieved 600% year-over-year revenue growth. With tightening compliance obligations following 2023 updates to the Davis-Bacon Act, contractors must rigorously document payroll and wage classifications or risk project disqualification and financial penalties.

"Specialty contractors represent the backbone of a massive construction industry, yet they have been historically overlooked by technological innovation," said Eddie Lee, General Partner at White Star Capital. "Anna and Cara bring a rare, powerful combination of deep industry empathy and elite engineering expertise. We led this round because Trayd isn't just solving a massive payroll headache; they are building the definitive end-to-end operating system for the trades."

"I grew up watching contractors spend hours every week trying to make payroll systems fit the realities of their jobs. Specialty trade contractors deploy the majority of the workforce that builds our cities, yet the software that supports that labor has lagged for decades. We're building the infrastructure that finally matches the complexity of how construction actually works," said Anna Berger, co-founder and CEO of Trayd. "Construction payroll is one of the most technically complex environments that exists; union rules, prevailing wages, tax jurisdictions, and project-level compliance requirements break traditional payroll software. We're bringing modern engineering discipline to a system that historically relied on spreadsheets and manual work," added co-founder and CTO, Cara Kessler.

Trayd is available to specialty trade contractors across the United States, with integrations for all major accounting and Enterprise Resource Planning systems (ERPs). To learn more and book a demo, visit buildtrayd.com.

About Trayd

Founded in 2021 by CEO Anna Berger, a second-time founder who grew up in a construction family, and CTO Cara Kessler, who spent 10 years at LinkedIn, Trayd is a New York City-based construction payroll and compliance platform designed for specialty contractors. The all-in-one back-office operating system offers payroll, HR, scheduling, and field tracking tools, automating wage calculations, tax adjustments, and compliance reporting across union, prevailing wage, and multi-state environments. Since launch, Trayd has reduced average weekly payroll processing time from 14 hours to 27 minutes, grown its team from six to 24, and achieved over 600% year-over-year revenue growth. Backed by White Star Capital, Suffolk Technologies, Y Combinator, and RXR, the company completed its $10 million Series A in 2026.