Most AI companies are chasing chatbots. This one is chasing plumbers.
Simpro Group, an AI-powered operating platform for commercial and residential trades, made Miami its North American headquarters in December 2025, taking exclusive signage rights on the One Downtown tower in the process.
From Cybersecurity to the Trades
Fred Voccola, Simpro's chairman and CEO since October 2025, isn't new to building software companies at scale. He previously ran Kaseya, growing the IT management and cybersecurity company to a $15 billion valuation and more than 5,000 employees before stepping back to vice chairman.
His read on the trades is straightforward.
"Commercial and residential trades represent more than $150 billion in global economic activity and are the backbone of modern society," Voccola said.
Simpro's platform, which also includes brands BigChange, AroFlo and ClockShark, is built to help contractors, technicians and field crews with scheduling, dispatch and getting paid faster.
The company describes itself as building the industry's only AI-first operating platform purpose-built to double the profitability of trades businesses, a specific, measurable claim rather than a vague efficiency pitch. That kind of concrete outcome promise is unusual in a category where most software vendors sell around general productivity gains instead.
Why Miami
Simpro already had a global footprint across three continents before choosing Miami as its central hub. Miami Mayor Francis Suarez welcomed the decision publicly.
"Fred Voccola's vision aligns perfectly with the spirit of Miami, fast, fearless and entrepreneurial," Suarez said.
Voccola has framed the choice as more than symbolic. The company said it plans to hire more than 500 employees in Miami, with the first wave of staff moving into the office by February 2026.
His prior experience is directly relevant here. Voccola built Kaseya into a Miami-headquartered company with more than 5,000 employees worldwide before taking on Simpro, giving him a specific playbook for scaling a software company from South Florida rather than relocating from the coasts after the fact.
The Scale Already Built In
Unlike a startup building toward its first customers, Simpro arrived in Miami already serving more than 24,000 businesses and roughly 500,000 users worldwide.
That scale matters for how this story fits into Miami's broader AI narrative.
Most of the AI companies MAIN covers are early-stage, racing toward their first meaningful contracts. Simpro is a company with real global revenue relocating its center of gravity to Miami, a different kind of validation for the city's tech ambitions than another funding round.
Voccola has been explicit about why he thinks trades businesses specifically need this kind of platform.
"They build our homes and schools, maintain our hospitals, protect our businesses, keep air, water and energy flowing," he said. "Even the future of AI, the data centers, the servers, the cooling systems, relies on them."
"The trades build our world and keep us moving forward," Voccola added. "Simpro builds the platform that pays them back."
What This Means for Miami
Simpro's arrival reinforces a pattern already showing up across Miami's AI economy: real value is concentrating in vertical, industry-specific applications rather than companies trying to out-build the frontier labs on raw model capability.
Trades and field service is a market most Silicon Valley AI startups overlook entirely, dismissed as unglamorous compared to consumer apps or enterprise software. Voccola's bet is that overlooked doesn't mean unprofitable, especially in an industry as large and fragmented as commercial and residential trades.
For Miami specifically, Simpro's decision to anchor its North American headquarters here, rather than simply opening a satellite office, adds a company with genuine global scale and revenue to a local AI ecosystem still built mostly around earlier-stage startups.
That's a meaningfully different data point for anyone tracking whether Miami's AI ambitions are translating into companies with real, proven business models.