A startup using agentic AI for construction just nabbed €5M in a round led by BayBG Venture Capital and Capricorn Partners.
Founded in 2021, Conxai says it is the first no-code AI platform for the architecture, engineering and construction industries. Currently focused on the latter, the German company uses agentic AI to automate currently fragmented workflows.
“Construction runs on data, but most of it has historically been unusable,” Faisal Butt, managing partner at Pi Labs, said in a statement. By applying AI to the industry, Conxai is “turning fragmented information into fast, high-quality decisions,” he said.
Pi Labs was an early backer of the Munich company, which took part in its 2022 growth programme. It was founded by Sharique Husain, the company’s CEO.
Conxai brings together siloed data, undocumented and tacit knowledge such as photos and documents from construction projects, to better understand data, costs and risks that may previously have been overlooked and underutilised.
Advances in technology are the main unlock here: off-the-shelf tools are blunt and can’t adapt to the changing nature of a live construction project, Conxai claims, while purpose-built tools take too long to develop.
Investors eye construction tech
Construction is a $13 trillion global industry, but has barely changed in decades. As AI and the energy transition supercharge the need to break ground, investors and startups are seeing vast opportunities to make architecture, engineering, and construction more efficient. Even a16z has its eye on the sector.
“Inside each firm, the tools are a mess. Most of the software these firms run on was built in the late 1990s — desktop applications, installed locally, not connected or hardly connected to the cloud,” the firm’s partners penned in a SubStack post. “They require enormous amounts of manual labour just to operate.”
Some 35% of construction professionals spent time on “non-optimal activities” according to a 2018 report.
Private equity investment in construction and engineering is also picking up, driven by infrastructure spending, including the rise of data centres.
“There are a great deal of design, engineering, and other activities that go into these spaces before a single shovel is moved,” said PitchBook industrialist analyst Jim Corridore in a March 13 note. He pointed to site work, electrification, plumbing, and cement as growth areas across both commercial and residential construction.
“Many of these subcategories are highly fragmented, and PE can step in with platform building and add-ons that grow the size and scale to allow for efficiencies in purchasing, supply chain, and back-end costs. These businesses can be scaled to grow EBITDA and garner a higher valuation before exit,” he added.
While AI can’t take on manual labour at scale, it can streamline service-heavy workflows, such as sifting through drawings, submittals, and site activity. Conxai’s platform can currently analyse fragmented tender submissions, extract key commercial and technical information to accelerate bid levelling, and identify risks, amongst other things. On sites, it uses real-time analysis of camera feeds to track progress, detect issues or delays, and generate reports.
The fresh funds will be used to further develop the agentic AI platform, expand into additional workflows, and fuel growth in North America, Europe, and Asia.
Existing investors Pi Labs, Earlybird, Noa, Zacua Ventures, and Argonautic Ventures also participated in the round.
