Progress-Tracking AI Startup Buildots Gains $60M Funding
Photo Courtesy Buildots
In a sign of continued interest in technologies for tracking work progress and keeping on schedule, Israel-based startup Buildots announced that it has raised $60 million in a Series C funding round. Buildots offers an AI-based system to analyze jobsite videos collected by hardhat-mounted 360° cameras to automatically identify work put-in-place in vertical construction. This data can be used to identify construction errors and keep schedules on track.
The funding round was led by Viola Growth and O.G. Tech, alongside existing investors TLV Partners, Lightspeed Venture Partners, Future Energy Ventures and Maor Investments. The new funding comes after Buildots’ $30-million Series B round in August 2021.
“Traditional markets like construction are increasing their embrace of digital transformation,” said Natalie Refuah, a general partner at investment group Viola Growth and a recent addition to Buildots’ board of directors.
“Buildots is the centerpiece of a unified construction ecosystem, and its data-centric solution has the potential to become a fixture in every project,” said Ziv Kop, O.G. Tech managing partner.
Buildots has expanded its product capabilities recently, adding integrations into scheduling software such as Oracle Primavera P6 and Microsoft Project. “Buildots is continuously improving the algorithms that power its AI and computer vision,” explained Roy Danon, CEO and co-founder of Buildots. “This enables a quicker turnaround time from data capture to data upload, and also plays an integral role in the recent product expansion to commercial and planning teams.”
Danon points out that Buildots goes beyond typical reality capture solutions, which capture images and video of jobsites but often stop at pairing it with the 3D model. "Buildots captures and analyzes data in the context of a project’s design and schedule. This is what lets Buildots follow a project’s specific terminology and blend its solution into various processes accordingly," he says. And integrations into scheduling software can make this a seamless experience.
"The granularity of Buildots’ data now enables a deeper understanding of the process," says Danon. "For instance, if an activity takes three weeks to complete but this period includes a one-week pause, the solution knows to account for and help investigate the cause of this stoppage."
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Buildots has been used by major contractors around the world, including Wates Group in the UK, Build Group in the U.S. and NCC Finland. While the company's focus has been on vertical construction, it's system has also been used for single-family residential projects as well as airports.
With the recent funding round, Buildots has raised a total of $106 million, Danon said. The number of employees at the company recently exceeded 200, and it aims to have more than 300 by the end of 2022.
