Last Week in ConTech - 31 July 2023
Neural Radiance Fields (NeRFs) & AI in enterprise software
ConTech Roundup - Construction technology startup funding, news and acquisitions this week. No fluff. No hype.
Last Week in ConTech - 31 July 2023
Startup Funding
Procurement
Licify, a Colombian startup, raised $3.4m in a seed funding round led by Brick & Mortar Ventures. They are a procurement and financial startup for the construction industry. More here.
Buildings
Infraspeak, a Portuguese startup, raised €7.5m. They are building an intelligent management management platform which allows teams to connect their assets (IoT, hardware, software) to transform data into real actions. More here.
Materials
Materials Nexus, a UK startup, raised £2M. They are using AI and quantum mechanics to discover materials to build sustainable technologies (such as wind turbines/batteries) attempting to mirror the disruptive power of AI in drug discovery for materials. More here.
Space DOTS, a UK startup, raised $1.5m in pre-seed funding. They are developing miniaturized in-situ testing for advanced materials in any space environment. More here.
Water
Cimico, a Spanish startup, raised $7.8m. They are creating biological solutions for wastewater treatment. More here.
Energy
Verse, a San Francisco startup, raised a $5.8m seed round. They are building a clean energy procurement and management software to help companies transition to clean power. More here.
Decarbonization
Tenderd, a Dubai, UAE startup, raised an undisclosed amount. They are building AI-enabled technologies for real time emissions intelligence and improve asset utilization. More here.
Ecoworks, a German startup, raised €22m. They renovate properties to reduce their CO2 emissions. More here.
New Funds
A/O Proptech has announced €100m first close of their second fund, targeting €250m. They are looking to invest in built world startups. More here.
Acquisitions
Oldcastle Infrastructure, a CRH company, acquired Hydro International. They are a UK water control, storage and quality management company. More here.
News
AENU (VC firm) have released a Water Tech Market Map. Map here.
McKinsey Technology Trends Outlook 2023: Trend 11: Future of Mobility
Mobility is at an inflection point shifting towards autonomous driving, electrification, connectivity and shared mobility.
Neural radiance fields (NeRFs) and billion-dollar opportunities they create in the 3D tool stack (Foundamental)
NeRFs are state-of-the-art AI networks which generate 3D representations of an object or scene from 2D images. This will ultimately replace photogrammetry.
Startups are beginning to apply Neural Radiance Fields (NeRFs) to capture built-world objects. Capturing assets and scenes will become a commodity.
Based on this, a new digital twin stack may be required to store, share and re-use reconstructed assets easily.
NeRFs are finding rapid adoption in ecommerce to provide interactive product displays to customers vs still images: Example
HP announces full availability of HP SitePrint
The SitePrint robot prints lines, objects and even text from a digital model onto the construction site floor.
These 5 cities aim to cool down by scaling up ‘smart surfaces’ in coming years
Surfaces such as cool roofs and pavements, green roofs, porous pavement or carbon-sequestering concrete help reduce urban heat.
The Smart Surfaces Coalition is creating a database of regulatory obstacles (zoning laws, buildings codes and regulations) which discourage smart surfaces adoption. Paper here.
How Skanska USA’s drone program evolved from novelty to must-have tech
To beat the Texas heat, this construction company is turning to wearable tech
LinkedIn Post from KP Reddy, partner at Shadow Ventures (summarized)
AI is becoming a feature of enterprise software due to the ease of rapid development using Open AI. Industry domain expertise will crush many startups without proprietary AI. Link here.How I Turned My Company’s Docs into a Searchable Database with OpenAI
If I missed anything this week, please reply and let me know! I’ll make sure to include it next week.