Last Week in ConTech - 14 August 2023
The Rise of the Infrastructure Startup
ConTech Roundup - Startup funding & news and acquisitions that was important this week in Construction Technology. No fluff. No hype.
Last Week in ConTech - 14 August 2023
Startup Funding
Transportation
Inrix, a Washington startup, raised a $70m financing round. They provide transportation and mobility analytics and connected car services. More here.
Moonware, a Los Angeles startup, raised $2.5m in pre-seed funding. They are building an AI-powered ground traffic control platform for airports. More here.
Infrastructure
Landways, a London startup, raised an equity investment. They design, fund, build and operate in building digital and power infrastructure (infrastructure as a service). More here.
Electrification
WattEV, a Californian startup, raised $40.5m in grant funding. They are building EV charging stations for trucks. More here.
Drones
Birdstop, a California startup, raised $2.3m in seed funding. They operate a drone network to monitor infrastructure assets (power grids, telecom networks and other infrastructure). More here.
Water
Wint, an Israeli startup, raised $35m in Series C funding. They provide a water management system to detect and automatically shut down leaks. More here.
Project Management
Programa, an Australian startup, raised $7.5m in Series A funding. They provide project management software for interior designers and architects.
Blackhyve, a Montana startup, raised $1.8m in funding. They provide construction management software.
Robotics
Skyline Robotics, a New York startup, raised $3.35m in funding. They developed a high-rise window cleaning robot. More here.
Acquisitions
Tesla has acquired Wiferion for $76m. Wiferion is a wireless EV charging company. More here.
Clearstory, a San Francisco startup building a Change Order Communication Tool, has acquired DataStreet which is a Change Management platform. More here.
Newterra, a company which designs, engineers, manufactures, and services environmental, water and wastewater treatment solutions, acquired Environmental Site Solutions, a supplier providing water treatment filtration solutions. More here.
News
The rise of the infrastructure startup (Sifted)
In the need to build green infrastructure, VCs have to become comfortable backing a different kind of company.
These companies have little to no tech innovation of their own, but are instead focused on building existing technology at scale.
An example is gigafactory startup Northvolt (valued at $12bn). They focus less on battery innovation and more on designing and building gigafactories where batteries can be produced at scale.
An issue is VCs’ lack of expertise and comfort with backing capital-intensive businesses. This has stopped disruptive companies from scaling.
Technology: A Driving Force for ESG in Real Estate and Infrastructure (Whitepaper from Taronga Ventures and Deloitte)
PT Waskita Karya, an Indonesian state construction company will be unable to repay bonds due August 6. More here.
California’s Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) is to host its vote on how and when Autonomous Vehicles can operate. This will effectively set the robotaxi market size in California. Meeting schedule here.
Why Meta, Microsoft, and Amazon Are Working Together to Disrupt Google Maps
Enabling renewable energy with battery energy storage systems (McKinsey)
LinkedIn Post from KP Reddy, partner at Shadow Ventures (summarized)
He notes rising PE interest in M&A for AEC and notes rising labor costs, subsequent effect on margins and the requirement for firms to have strong technology strategies.
His thoughts: PE will go down market to acquire smaller firms that are driving innovation. Acquiring small firms is usually not “worth the trouble”. But there is an opportunity to make them a platform company, whereas in the past, platform company was purely correlated to company size. This is a classic playbook in tech. Buy a small innovative company at a premium. Bolt on larger legacy tech companies to acquire customers and market. Original Link here.
If I missed anything this week, please reply and let me know! I’ll make sure to include it next week.