Lukas Ziegler (@lukas_m_ziegler) “Another awesome robotics company raised funds in Europe. 🇪🇺 This time a company” — TopicDigg

Another awesome robotics company raised funds in Europe. 🇪🇺 This time a company that is shipping robots that build! @BuildMonumental has raised $32M Series B led by Khosla Ventures, and its fleet of autonomous bricklaying robots has already built more than 100 real structures across Europe. Houses. A school. A community centre. A hotel. Canal walls. Founded by @salar al Khafaji and Sebastiaan Visser, the co-founders of data visualisation firm Silk, acquired by Palantir in 2016, this is a team that knows how to build and sell a company. The technology is serious: → Fleet of 100+ electric autonomous robots operating on live job sites today → Advanced sensors, computer vision and small cranes laying brick to millimetre precision → All driven by Atrium, their proprietary AI software platform → Nearly half of all homes built in the last three months alone, pace is compounding fast The business model is also worth taking a look at. Contractors don't buy the robots. They hire Monumental as an autonomous subcontractor and pay for finished wall. So in the end you only pay for the output. This is the same forward-deployed engineering model Palantir pioneered in software. Monumental brought it to physical robotics years before anyone else in the industry caught on. The backdrop makes this urgent. US construction is short 200,000-400,000 workers every month. Since 1945, US manufacturing productivity rose eightfold. Construction gained just 10%, and has actually declined since the 1960s. LET'S MAKE CONSTRUCTION BUSINESSES SEXY AGAIN! 🧱 ~~ ♻️ Join the weekly robotics newsletter, and never miss any news →