Veteran-turned-founder recognized among the 500 most influential executives in Los Angeles
LOS ANGELES, CA / ACCESS Newswire / May 11, 2026 / Alok Chanani, Co-Founder and CEO of BuildOps, has been named to the Los Angeles Business Journal’s 2026 LA500, the publication’s annual list of the 500 most influential executives across Los Angeles business.
Chanani co-founded BuildOps in 2018 alongside Steve Chew to build modern software for commercial contractors, the HVAC, electrical, plumbing, and mechanical companies that keep America’s hospitals, schools, data centers, and office towers running. These are the businesses behind the systems most people never think about until something breaks. Their work is physical, technical, and unforgiving, and for decades the technology available to run it lagged far behind the industries it served.
Under Chanani’s leadership, BuildOps has grown into the operating system for that work. The platform now serves more than 1,500 commercial contractors across North America, unifying service, projects, and financials in one system. The company reached unicorn status in March 2025 following a $127 million Series C led by Meritech Capital Partners, bringing total funding to more than $250 million from investors including Founders Fund and N47.
For Chanani, the recognition reflects a deeper conviction about who BuildOps exists to serve.
“The men and women in the trades are the people who keep this country running, and they deserve technology built with the same sophistication they bring to their own work,” said Alok Chanani, Co-Founder and CEO of BuildOps. “The work in the field is irreducibly human, and our job is to give the people doing it more time to do what they do best. Any recognition that comes our way belongs to the contractors and crews who trusted us to build alongside them.”
Chanani’s path to building for the trades began far from software. He served as a U.S. Army Captain in Iraq, where he was awarded the Meritorious Service Medal for distinguished service in combat operations. He later worked in Southern California commercial real estate development, where he saw firsthand how the businesses doing the actual construction and maintenance were running on tools that had not kept pace with the complexity of their work. That observation, paired with the partnership with Steve Chew, became BuildOps. Chanani holds an MBA from The Wharton School and a BA in Economics from Cornell University.
About BuildOps
BuildOps is the AI-native platform for commercial contractors. One system to run service, projects, and financials – from the first call to the final invoice. With intelligence built into every workflow, BuildOps doesn’t just track the work – it moves it forward. More than 1,500 leading companies across North America trust BuildOps. Learn more at https://buildops.com/.
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SOURCE: BuildOps
