Israeli construction technology company Buildots said Monday it has raised $130 million in a funding round aimed at accelerating the expansion of its artificial intelligence platform for monitoring large-scale construction projects, including the rapidly growing global data center sector.
The round was led by O.G. Venture Partners, with participation from Lightspeed Venture Partners, Intel Capital, Mohari Ventures, Human Capital, Qumra Capital, Israeli technology investor Avigdor Willenz, Viola Growth and Poalim Equity.
Buildots founders (left to right) Roy Danon, Yakir Sudry and Aviv Leibovici
(Photo: Eyal Toueg)
The latest investment brings Buildots’ total funding to $297 million. The Tel Aviv-based company said it has recorded threefold annual revenue growth for several consecutive years.
Buildots develops an AI-powered platform designed to give construction companies and project owners a continuously updated picture of progress at building sites. The company describes the technology as a “control tower” for major construction programs, allowing managers to base decisions on data gathered from sites rather than manual inspections and subjective progress reports.
The company is seeking to capitalize on growing investment in data centers needed to support artificial intelligence, as well as new manufacturing facilities, defense projects and energy infrastructure. Buildots estimates the global construction industry at $16 trillion.
More than 100 large companies currently use Buildots, according to the company. Customers include Intel and data center operator Digital Realty, as well as major construction companies STO Building Group, JE Dunn, Mortenson, Bouygues and HOCHTIEF. Buildots said its technology is also being used by major cloud computing companies, though it did not identify them.
The company said the increasing size and complexity of data centers, advanced manufacturing plants, energy infrastructure and other critical projects have increased demand for technology that can identify construction delays and other problems earlier.
Buildots said seven-figure, multiyear agreements covering entire construction portfolios have increasingly become standard among its customers.
“It will soon be inconceivable that anyone managed a construction portfolio without Buildots,” CEO and co-founder Roy Danon said.
Danon said the shift toward data-driven construction management had begun before the surge in AI infrastructure investment but that the data center boom had sharply accelerated it.
“Buildots is now used across residential, commercial and — of course — mission-critical projects worldwide, on jobs of every size, from single sites to entire portfolios,” he said. “The blind spot we solve for a data center is the same one that's been costing a school or a hospital for decades, just at much greater scale, which is why the world is finally paying attention.”
“The AI era will be built on schedule,” he added.
Linking construction sites to digital models
Buildots’ technology uses computer vision and other AI tools to connect activity at physical construction sites with digital plans and schedules.
The company said its proprietary AI was developed using eight years of data collected from real construction sites rather than information scraped from the internet or drawn from general-purpose AI models.
Its computer vision systems analyze video footage from construction sites and use it to create a digital twin, or virtual representation, of a project. The technology analyzes construction schedules, 3D models and site imagery together to identify and classify hundreds of types of construction work.
Buildots says the system can replace or supplement fragmented progress reports, manual inspections and subjective assessments by providing a single, continuously updated view of a project’s status. It also uses the data to forecast how a project is likely to progress.
The company argues that the financial benefits can be substantial on major developments. On a project costing $1 billion, even relatively small improvements in execution can produce significant savings, it said.
Earlier identification of delays can give contractors more time to address problems, while more accurate progress information can help companies determine how to deploy workers and capital. At the portfolio level, Buildots says executives can use its technology to identify risks across multiple construction projects before they become more costly.
Buildots looks to become core construction infrastructure
Buildots said it plans to use the new funding to expand its technology across more of the world’s largest construction portfolios, particularly in North America, Europe, the Middle East and Africa.
The company also plans to expand its platform across the construction process, from bidding through completion and handover, while developing higher-level analytics intended to help executives manage multiple projects using standardized performance data.
Buildots’ goal is to make its platform a core part of construction companies’ operations, similar to financial management and procurement systems.
Ziv Kop, managing partner at O.G. Venture Partners, said Buildots had the potential to become a foundational technology platform for the industry.
“In 20-plus years of backing category-defining companies, the pattern is always the same: the winners build the foundational technology layer that everyone else ends up depending on,” Kop said. “Buildots is that layer for construction, trained on a volume and quality of site data that nobody else has.”
The financing adds two new investors to Buildots’ shareholder base: San Francisco-based Human Capital, which has invested in companies including SpaceX, Neuralink and Anduril, and Mohari Ventures.
Buildots’ existing investors also include TLV Partners, Future Energy Ventures, Maor Investments and Israeli construction company Tidhar.