Few categories are as ripe for disruption through automation as the construction industry. This industry is worth approximately $2 trillion annually in the United States alone. Much of the work is arduous, repetitive, and sometimes dangerous. This is exactly the kind of problem industrial robots were built to solve. Another thing that construction brings is a wide range of different challenges. This means more startups can operate in this space without direct competition.
Bricklaying robots are by no means an undeveloped concept. At the moment, perhaps the best known player in this field is Hadrian X. This American company specializes in building structures from large concrete masonry blocks. Amsterdam-based Monumental, on the other hand, specializes in the more familiar red clay variety.
The startup was founded in 2021 by two people from data visualization company Silk (now a joint part of Palantir). Monumental is already running limited trials in its native Netherlands, including a 15-meter-long cladding on an office building. He then partnered with 25 of his contractors, including low-income housing.
I can't say much about the system's effectiveness beyond what I've seen in a few video demos, but it's clear that the company is tackling the problem from a number of different fronts, including autonomous carts designed to carry heavy loads. I can tell you that it looks like it is. payload. From there, another robot spreads the liquid mortar and places the bricks.
“At Monumental, we are working to help the industry meet these challenges,” said Salar Al Khafaji, co-founder and CEO. “Our agile, intelligent and adaptive robots and software blend human expertise and robotic efficiency in a way the industry has never seen before.”
To celebrate its coming out party, Monumental is announcing a massive $25 million round led by Plural and Hummingbird, with participation from Northzone, Foundational, and NP-Hard Ventures.
The funding will go toward hiring, scaling up manufacturing, and diversifying the types of bricks/blocks the robots can process.