There is a moment every land acquisition professional knows well. You have found a parcel. You have toggled through zoning layers, flood maps, and ownership records. You have exported a PDF. And then you sit there, staring at a map, still needing to answer the question that actually matters: is this site actually worth going for?
That moment, the gap between raw data and an actual decision, is where Latapult ends and Prophetic begins.
Where Latapult Came From and Where It Stops
Latapult was built in 2016 as an internal tool inside a civil engineering firm. That origin defines the product. It was designed by engineers to gather and visualize data, not by land acquisition teams to accelerate deal decisions. The distinction shows up everywhere: in its customer base skewing toward civil engineering firms and commercial brokers, in its conference presence at renewable energy events, and in what happens when you pull a parcel. It hands you 250+ organized layers. Everything after that is on you.
Latapult makes no artificial intelligence claims anywhere in its marketing. Not on product pages, not in customer testimonials, not in press coverage. The absence of AI is not a feature waiting to be launched. It reflects a foundational product decision: Latapult was built to be a data library, not an intelligence engine.
Prophetic was architected around artificial intelligence from day one. ZoneAI interprets over 440,000 distinct zoning rule descriptions and delivers plain-language answers about what can be built on any parcel. SiteAI generates a full subdivision plan and yield study in seconds, replacing a workflow that once required days of coordination with outside engineers. SearchAI surfaces matching opportunities across more than 120 parameters, finding sites your team did not know to look for.
The gap between a buildable area calculator and a real-time feasibility study is not a feature gap. It is the difference between a tool that removes a calculation and a platform that removes a decision.
What Land Teams Actually Say
"The development feasibility report saves us so much time. When we've got five prospects and we want to make a quick decision about which ones we're going after, it cuts our decision-making time down by weeks." - General Manager of Land, Top 5 National Homebuilder
"What used to take days to vet viable parcels, we identified within seconds." - Land Analyst, National Homebuilder
"Prophetic isn't just faster. It's smarter, easier, and built for how modern land teams make decisions." - Regional Land Director, National Homebuilder
These are not our claims. These are the words of land acquisition professionals who needed more than organized data.
The Verdict
Latapult is a solid GIS data platform for teams that need consolidated land data and have the analytical capacity to interpret it themselves. It serves those needs reasonably well.
For production homebuilders competing to find and close sites in fast-moving markets, it stops exactly where the hard work begins. It drops 250 layers at your feet and hands you a shovel. The question is whether your team has time to dig.
Ready to see Prophetic in action? Request a demo.
