Buildots, a startup based in Tel Aviv and London that uses computer vision to modernize the construction management sector, announced today that it has raised $ 16 million in total funding. This includes a $ 3 million round that had not been previously reported and a $ 13 million Serie A round, both led by TLV Partners. Other investors include Innogy Initiatives, Tidhar Construction team, Ziv Aviram (co-founder of Mobileye & OrCam), Head of Magma Ventures Zvika lemon, serial entrepreneurs Benny Schnaider and Avigdor Willenzas well as the president of Tidhar Gil Geva.
The idea behind Buildots it is quite simple. The team uses 360 degree cameras mounted on the hardhat to allow project managers on construction sites to get an overview of the status of a project and whether it remains on schedule. The company's software creates a digital twin of the construction site, using the plans and the architecture program as a basis, then uses the computerized vision to compare what the plans say with the reality that its tools are seeing. With this, Buildots can immediately detect when a power outlet is missing in a room or if there is a sink that still needs to be installed in a kitchen, for example.
I was able to solve a challenge that for many seemed invincible, offering enormous potential to change the way we complete our projects, "said Tidhar Geva in a statement. "The combination of an ambitious vision, a great team and strong execution skills quickly led us from being a customer to joining us as an investor to take part in their journey."
The company was co-founded in 2018 by Roy Danon, Aviv Leibovici is Yakir Various. Like so many Israeli startups, the founders met during their time in the Israeli defense forces, where they graduated from the Talpiot unit.
"At some point, like many of our friends, we had the urge to do something together: build a company, start something from scratch," said Danon, CEO of the company. "For us, we like to get our hands dirty. We have seen most of our friends enter the more standard industries like cloud and cyber and storage and things where people like us obviously feel more comfortable, but for some reason we had a bug that said, "We want do something that's a little more difficult, which has a bigger impact on the world. " "
So the team started studying how to bring technology to traditional industries such as agriculture, finance and medicine, but then decided to build thanks to a casual meeting with a construction company. For the first six months, the team mainly researched in Israel and London to find out where it could deliver value.
Danon argues that the construction industry is essentially a manufacturing industry, but with very obsolete process control and management systems that still often rely on Excel to track progress.
The yards obviously present their problems. Often there is no Wi-Fi, for example, so contractors still have to manually upload their videos to Buildots' servers. They are also three-dimensional, so the team had to develop systems to understand on which floor a video was shot, for example, and for large indoor spaces, even GPS will not work.
The teams told me that prior to the COVID-19 blockades, it focused mainly on Israel and the United Kingdom, but the pandemic actually accelerated its push to other geographic areas. He has just started working on a big project in Poland and is scheduled to work on another in Japan next month.
Since the construction industry is very project driven, sales often start with the inclusion of a project manager. That project manager usually also owns the budget for the project, so they can also often sign the check, Danon noted. And once it's settled, the general contractor often wants to talk to the company about a bigger business deal.
As for funding, the company's Serie A round met just before the blocks started. The company has managed to bring together an interesting mix of investors from the construction and technology sector.
Now, the plan is to scale back the company, which currently has 35 employees, and understand even more ways to use the data collected by the service and make it useful for its users. "We take a long journey to turn all the data we have into supporting all workflows on a construction site," said Danon. "There are so many other things to do and so many more roles to support."
