Construction tech startup Automated Architecture has raised a £2.6 million seed round of funding.
The London firm is building sustainable and affordable homes using micro-factories. The investment will support the growth of its partner licence network with 10 more partners and expand operations in the US.
This funding round is led by DeepTech and AI fund Miles Ahead alongside Robotics & Automation Ventures, the venture capital unit of the ABB Robotics & Discrete Automation business, Rival Holdings, Morgan Stanley, Vandenbussche Group and Bacchus Venture Capital.
Angel investors Nicolas Bearelle, Atomico Scout Stefano Bernardi and Dob Todorov also took part.
AUAR partners with home builders and contractors in Europe and North America to build the first distributed micro-factory network for sustainable timber housing. The company licenses its low CapEx robotic micro-factories and tech stack to a network of existing home builders, creating a revenue opportunity for these companies to deliver low-energy homes at the price of normal homes and at scale.
AUAR’s design algorithms can generate endless design variations adapted to local sites.
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The company offers a different vision for the built environment, where automation is not centralised into large factories but empowers local ecosystems of communities, contractors, architects and developers to build better homes.
It is targeting 40 licence partners for its micro-factories by 2030, with a capacity to produce over 75,000 energy-efficient homes and remove millions of tons of CO2 each year.
AUAR was founded in 2019 by Mollie Claypool, CEO, and Gilles Retsin, CTO and chief architect, after working together for over a decade researching how robotics, generative design, and AI could radically transform housing and how we live.
“There is a huge and urgent need for affordable low-energy homes, but currently, these are expensive to build and difficult to deliver at scale. Building high-quality, sustainable timber homes is hard to scale, but AUAR is here to change that,” said Claypool.
“Robots and AI allow us to deliver high-quality housing at significantly lower costs, increasing margins and productivity while lowering the cost for the end users.
“By using our solution, construction companies are incentivised to meet much-needed sustainability targets.”
Retsin added: “AUAR has developed all the tech home builders need to develop, produce, and build affordable low-energy homes while increasing margins and productivity. Our technology is low CapEx, doesn’t require big factories, and pays itself back in a few months.”