AI construction firm Buildots has secured $16m (£12.2m) in funding to leverage the power of AI to track, analyze and provide actionable data for construction project teams.
The $3 million seed and $13 million series A rounds were led by TLV Partners with the participation of Innogy Ventures, Tidhar Construction Group, Ziv Aviram, co-founder of Mobileye & OrCam, Magma Ventures head Zvika Limon, serial entrepreneurs Benny Schnaider & Avigdor Willenz, and Gil Geva, chairman of Tidhar.
The firm’s technology is designed to replace manual record-taking by project managers who often keep track of hundreds of thousands of tasks and the progress of dozens of contractors.
Buildots uses hardhat-mounted cameras to capture imaging of an ongoing project during site walks.
The data is then automatically compared to the design model.
The firm said an electricity socket installed a few inches from where it should be is visible in the dashboard along with a photo – allowing mistakes or omissions to be corrected.
Its dashboard displays the percentage of the project completed, broken down by each trade.
Buildots said it now has plans to make their product available to the US market in the coming year.
“In the short time since we started rolling out our product, the immense value it brings to the industry has become clear,” said Roy Danon, CEO of Buildots.
“Any efficient process must have proper controls in place, but till now, automatic process control has been impossible to implement in construction. Thanks to the latest advancements in the fields of AI and computer vision, we’ve been able to bring modern systems that are ubiquitous in other industries, to construction.”
The UK and Israel-based company was founded in 2018 by Roy Danon, Aviv Leibovici, and Yakir Sundry. All three graduated from ‘Talpiot’, the creative engine of the Israeli Defense Forces.
The company has now grown to 35 developers, engineers, researchers and business professionals.
They count among their clients two of the ten largest construction companies in Europe, as well as the largest Israeli construction firm.
“Since founding the company, we have managed to prove both technical feasibility and product-market fit, by deploying the product on large-scale construction projects and showing huge returns for our customers,” explained Danon.
“This new funding round is a great sign of confidence by existing and new investors, and will be used to scale and improve our product, and expand to new regions.”