Stratus, the digital fabrication platform used by contractors in piping & plumbing, sheet metal, and electrical trades, today announced Stratus Labs, its formal AI and innovation arm. The announcement was made at Innovate 2026, the company’s annual MEP event taking place in Seattle from August 18–20.
Stratus Labs is led by co-founder and Chief Innovation Officer Jonathan Umscheid. The unit formalizes the company’s approach of building directly with customers using real workflow data to create agentic tools.
First experiments released:
- Agentic Spooling — a set of three capabilities that automate spooling and assembly work:
– Assembly Matcher: clones existing modeled assemblies (e.g., matching floors of a high-rise)
– Assembly Designer: applies size/weight constraints and creates new assemblies via breakpoint edits
– Assembly Agent: AI/ML model trained on a customer’s own models to predict new assemblies - Big Data MCP Server — an experimental Model Context Protocol server that gives AI tools direct access to Stratus’s Big Data so customers and partners can build their own workflows on top of it.
Jake Olsen, CEO of Stratus, said: “AI is changing how fast software can move. We built Stratus Labs to match that pace, putting real data intelligence and agentic workflows directly into customers’ hands.”
Jonathan Umscheid added: “This is our flag in the ground. We wanted the first thing people see out of Stratus Labs to be real, usable value today — not a roadmap promise.”
The company stated that each capability is available to Stratus customers in an experimental environment today upon request. More than 10 additional value-adding features can be opted into by signing up. Attendees at Innovate 2026 will be able to preview results with their own models and data.