Monumental designs, machines, and maintains robots that lay bricks at construction sites. | Source: Monumental
Monumental, an Amsterdam-based provider of construction robotics and software, this week raised $32 million in Series B funding. The company said it plans to use the financing to expand to the U.S. this year and to enable its robots to do more things.
“The funding will help to grow our world-class team of hardware and software engineers, launch the company in the U.S. this year, scale the number of robots it can deploy across Europe, and expand the range of construction tasks the robots can handle beyond bricklaying,” Salar al Khafaji, co-founder and CEO of Monumenal, told The Robot Report.
Monumental acts as a subcontractor during construction work. Contractors pay the company for finished walls rather than for robots. This, Monumental said, removes the financial and technical risk of owning and operating equipment.
“Our goal isn’t to replace people, but to give the industry the additional capacity it desperately needs,” al Khafaji said. “By taking on repetitive bricklaying work, the robots allow skilled workers to focus on higher-value tasks while helping the industry build more homes and infrastructure despite persistent labor shortages.”
How do Monumental’s robots build walls?
Monumental’s electric, autonomous robots use advanced sensors, computer vision, and cranes to lay brick and mortar with millimeter precision. Atrium, the company’s AI software platform, operates all of this.
“Our robots autonomously build masonry structures by laying bricks and applying mortar on active construction sites alongside a human crew,” al Khafaji said. “They are also able to pick up special tools for additional tasks, such as inserting wall ties and pointing the mortar. They handle the repetitive, physically demanding bricklaying process with millimeter precision, working directly from digital building plans through our proprietary software, Atrium.”
Already, Monumental’s robots have built the walls of more than 100 homes across the Netherlands and the U.K., along with a school, a community center, a hotel, and canal walls.
“Humans remain responsible for the broader construction process,” al Khafaji continued. “The existing crew continues to manage the overall project, prepare the site, coordinate with other trades, and perform all work outside of the masonry process. Monumental’s own operators deploy and oversee the robots, replenish materials, perform maintenance, and intervene if an unexpected situation arises that requires human judgment. Human operators are an important part of the process to make sure that everything that happens on a job site is handled safely.”
Monumental aims for the U.S. construction market
In any given month, the U.S. is short between 200,000 and 400,000 construction workers, and home builders will need to add 2.2 million more over the next three years just to keep up with demand. Monumental hopes to help close this gap.
Al Khafaji said there are a few key differences between the U.S. and European construction markets. The U.S. is more fragmented. Here, building codes, labor structures, and construction practices can vary from state to state.
“Monumental is uniquely positioned for this kind of challenge,” al Khafaji said. “We’ve already proven our ability to adapt our robots across different customers and construction practices in Europe, and our software-driven approach makes it possible to tailor deployments to local building methods and regulatory requirements. Just like any subcontractor, we work closely with contractors to integrate into their existing workflows.”
Real-world success drives Monumental’s latest funding
Monumental said it investors were impressed by the company’s real-world successes. Khosla Ventures led the round, which also included participation from Hummingbird, Plural, and others.
“The biggest lesson that we learned is that this actually works. Our Series A round was focused on R&D and proving small-scale success,” said al Khafaji. “Our Series B was raised off of real-world success. Real construction sites are the best R&D lab.”
“There are many unwritten unknown unknowns in construction which we’ve discovered by being deployed in the real world,” he said. “Building 100 homes has taught us how to make the system more reliable, easier to deploy, and better integrated into the day-to-day realities of construction.”
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