Digs Filed Its Last Public Patent 30 Months Before the Money Arrived
Digs holds 5 patent families: 0 granted and 5 published and pending. Filing began in 2022, with the most recent published filing dated 2024-02-06. The families appear in 2 patent offices: United States and PCT.Patent figures from Google Patents Public Data, reviewed 2026-09-14. Funding: $25.3M Series A, FUSE, Flying Fish Partners and Betaworks, 2026-08-25.
A construction software company raised $25.3M on five patent families, none of them granted yet. The filings describe 3D building models and digital twins. The hiring plan describes salespeople. What does the record actually show about what Digs built, and when?
One pulse, and a long quiet before it
Digs was founded in 2022 and raised a $25.3M Series A from FUSE, Flying Fish Partners and Betaworks. That is the event on the diagram: a single point, clearly marked. Everything interesting sits behind it. The company's last public patent filing is dated 2024-02-06, thirty months before this round closed. Anything filed since then is still inside the eighteen-month publication window and invisible to anyone reading the file.
So the visible record stops well short of the money. That is not unusual, but it changes how you read the portfolio. What you can see is what Digs believed in its first two years of existence, before the round, before the hiring. The bet was placed early. The capital arrived later to build on top of it. The diagram shows the arrival. The filings show the bet.
Five families, zero grants, all of it pending
The ribbon splits and one side is empty. Five patent families since 2022, filed in the US and via WO, and not one of them granted. All five are published and pending. The first of those could grant at any time, and the rest should follow around 2026. Until then nothing in the portfolio is enforceable. The scope of what Digs owns has not been fixed by an examiner.
The filing velocity tells you when the thinking happened: one family in 2022, three in 2023, one in 2024. The heavy year was the middle one. Titles from that period read context-aware building model search, ai-assisted creation of 3d building models, generation of a digital twin from construction information. That is not document management. That is geometry, search, and the machinery for turning construction paperwork into a model.
The company describes itself as project and document software. The claims describe 3D model generation.
One name on every single filing
Six inventors are named across the portfolio. Ty Frackiewicz appears on five of five. Ryan R Fink appears on four, and Ryan Fink on two. The highlighted dot is doing nearly all the work. A portfolio this concentrated is usually one person's technical thesis, written down in stages, with collaborators joining for particular pieces.
That matters for reading the claims. Five families from one persistent hand tend to be consistent: the same underlying idea, approached from different angles, rather than five unrelated grabs. It also means the institutional memory of what those claims were meant to cover is held by very few people. The hiring list includes five software and AI roles, two of them engineering interns for spring 2026 working on AI/ML backend and test automation.
Small circle, very large neighbours
The claims cluster in computing (G06F) and image processing (G06T). Those CPC groups are busy. Over the last five years the same codes drew 1,511 families from Beihang University, 1,468 from State Grid China, 1,323 from Northwestern Polytechnical University and 1,277 from Xi An Jiaotong University, with Nanjing Aeronautics & Astronautics University and Zhejiang University close behind. Digs sits on the same axis at five.
Scale like that is not a competitive threat in any direct sense. It is mostly Chinese university research across a very broad pair of codes. But it does tell you that count is worthless as a signal here. Nobody wins G06T by volume. What decides whether five families are worth anything is how narrowly and specifically they claim the construction case, and that answer arrives with the first grants.
Who has already read the file
Citations run the other way and they are more revealing. University of Florida cites the Digs portfolio three times. Lee Ming Construction cites it twice, Smartthings twice, and Weber Dirk and Danaos Shipping Company once each. That is a short list, but the mix is specific: an academic group, a construction firm, a connected-home platform, and shipping.
Those are four separate reasons to care about turning physical structures into searchable digital models. None of them are homebuilder project management. The citing set suggests the underlying work reads as spatial modelling technique rather than vertical software, which is exactly what the filing titles say it is. Work gets cited by the people solving the same technical problem, whatever industry they happen to sit in.
A shipping company and a smart-home platform found the same five families useful.
The asset is the filing, not the app
Put it together. Five families from one inventor, filed 2022 to early 2024, claiming 3D building model generation and digital twins from construction information. Nothing granted. Then a $25.3M round, and sixteen open roles of which eight are go-to-market against five in software and AI. That is a commercialisation hire sheet. The building phase is behind them, at least the phase the public record can see.
Which means the technical position was set before the money and is now being sold, not extended, at least not visibly. The first grants should land around 2026 and they will define what the position actually is. Until then Digs is a company whose stated product is construction workflow software and whose written record is computer vision and spatial modelling.
Is a five-family pending portfolio a real moat?
Three things separate a thin portfolio that holds from one that does not. No single one settles it. A concentrated inventor list means little without scope; scope means little without grants.
A claim set, not a moat
Five unexamined families in crowded CPC groups, with the last public filing thirty months old. The position is entirely prospective.
The asset is the filing, not the app
When the first family grants, do the allowed claims cover 3D model generation broadly or only the narrow construction-document pipeline?
Do publications appearing after the thirty-month gap continue the same digital twin thread, or move toward the homebuilder workflow the company describes?
Does any inventor other than Ty Frackiewicz lead a family, and do the five new software and AI hires appear on subsequent filings?
Do the citing organizations outside construction, such as Smartthings and Danaos Shipping Company, keep returning to these families as the portfolio grows?
Following those would tell you whether Digs owns a construction product with some technology in it, or a spatial modelling technique that happens to be pointed at construction first.
Common questions
How many patents does Digs have?
Digs holds 5 patent families as reviewed in 2026-09: 0 granted and 5 published and pending.
How many of Digs's patents are granted?
None of the 5 families have granted yet. On typical pendency the first grants would be expected around 2026.
What technology do Digs's patents cover?
Digs's claims cluster in computing (G06F), image processing (G06T) and video / image transmission (H04N). Recent filing titles include "context-aware building model search" and "ai-assisted creation of 3d building models".
Where has Digs filed patents?
Digs's families appear in 2 patent offices: United States and PCT.
Which companies file patents in the same areas as Digs?
The same CPC groups drew Beihang University, State Grid China, Northwestern Polytechnical University and Xi An Jiaotong University over the last five years. Shared classification indicates a common technology field rather than direct competition.
Who cites Digs's patents?
Patent records from University of Florida, Lee Ming Construction, Smartthings and Weber Dirk cite Digs's filings. A citation indicates a reference to the work, not evidence of commercial use.
Who invented Digs's patents?
6 inventors are named across the portfolio. The most frequently named is Ty Frackiewicz. Inventor names do not establish ownership, which is determined by assignment records.
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