Monumental has secured $32 million in a Series B to fast-track the development of its construction robots that build walls autonomously.
The Amsterdam-based company runs a fleet of 100 robots which use advanced sensors, computer vision and small cranes to lay brick and mortar.
Monumental works like a traditional subcontractor, offering robots to hire for customers.
“We’re not selling a robot. We’re selling them a wall,” Salar al Khafaji, CEO and Founder of Monumental, told IZON.
This allows construction companies to access autonomous labour without having to manage the technology themselves.
If the robots cannot complete the whole job, Salar said that they will finish it with humans even if it costs them their margins. “That’s our responsibility to our customers.”
So far the robots have built more than 100 homes across The Netherlands and the UK, along with a school, sports centre, community centre, hotel and hundreds of meters of Amsterdam’s canal walls.
Now Monumental has its sights set on the US, where it will launch later this year.
The company said that in any given month the US is short between 200,000 and 400,000 construction workers. Home builders will need to build 2.2 million more homes over the next three years just to keep pace with demand.
“Construction is one of the largest industries in the world, but it’s been constrained by labour shortages and hasn’t benefited from automation the way other industries have,” Salar said.
“We’re one of the only autonomy companies being deployed on real job sites where the economics work,” he added.
