TL;DR by CuriousCats.ai
Contech funding roundup: six startups raise $234M
- June 17 SubBase announced a Series A led by FINTOP. Fort Lauderdale, Florida-based SubBase provides an online platform that unifies the procurement process. With the funding, the firm will pursue product and engineering growth, expand its supplier network, and support an AI-driven intelligence and workflow layer trained on pricing, supplier performance and delivery data.
- July 14 TerraFirma announced a $100 million Series A led by Kleiner Perkins. The company's full-stack robotic infrastructure platform combines AI-enabled preconstruction software with a remote command-and-control center and includes semi-autonomous heavy machinery spanning excavators to skid steers. With the funding, Texas-based TerraFirma will expand its engineering, manufacturing, operations and construction teams and will continue to develop its semi-autonomous heavy equipment systems.
- July 15 Monumental announced a Series B led by Khosla Ventures. The firm's Atrium AI software platform controls its fleet of robots that act as a construction team. The robots have built the walls of a school, a community center, a hotel and stretches of a canal wall, along with more than 100 homes in the Netherlands and the U.K.; Monumental plans a U.S. launch this year.
- July 21 Gritt announced pre-Seed and Series A rounds; the Series A worth $26 million was led by Obvious Ventures. The firm's products enable machinery to pick and place, assemble and transport materials with millimeter precision amid fluid environments, and the system is adaptable and learns from deployment, cutting timelines from months to days.
- July 22 Arrakis announced a $30 million Series A and a $7.5 million Seed round, led by Blossom Capital and Accel respectively. The company operates from London and Paris and combines forward-deployed AI engineers with a model-agnostic enterprise AI platform and applied AI research tuned to industrial operations such as construction; the funds will triple headcount, strengthen security and platform capabilities and fuel expansion into the U.S., Europe and the Middle East.
- July 28 Buildforce announced a funding round led by Saepio Capital. Buildforce, a tech-enabled staffing business that focuses on electricians, uses its platform to connect electricians with electrical contractors and has logged over 2 million hours on over 2,000 projects; the funding will support national expansion and further develop its technology.
Contech funding backdrop
- Cash into the construction technology space grew by 85% during the pandemic, according to McKinsey.
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Key Insight
“The funding surge reflects an 85% growth in construction tech investment during the pandemic, per McKinsey. TerraFirma, led by former SpaceX engineers, will expand its semi-autonomous heavy machinery, while Monumental's robots have already built over 100 homes in the Netherlands and the U.K.”
CuriousCats studied:
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Yahoo Finance
Yahoo Finance“Cash into the construction technology space grew by 85% during the pandemic, according to McKinsey.”
Yahoo Finance →2
Construction Dive
“TerraFirma, a construction robotics firm led by former SpaceX engineers, has , which includes $100 million from a Series A funding round led by venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins, according to a July 14 announcement.”
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