Venture capital has been flooding the various subverticals under the robotics umbrella in recent years, and the construction space is one of the largest beneficiaries.
Last November, we surveyed 13 of the top robotics-focused VCs to find out which areas of robotics are exciting them most going into 2020. One of the most common areas of attention respondents highlighted were startups focused on construction and manufacturing. In 2019 alone, the robotics space saw roughly 600 venture-backed fundraising rounds, while construction companies successfully raised roughly 200 venture rounds.
With our 2020 Robotics + AI sessions event on the horizon in early March, we’re diving back into the sector to learn about the attributes of construction attracting robotics VCs the most and which types of startups VCs are actually writing checks for in 2020. We asked 16 leading people who actively invest in construction robotics and work at firms spanning early to growth-stage to share what’s exciting them most and where they see opportunity in the sector:
- Rohit Sharma, True Ventures
- Matt Murphy, Menlo Ventures
- Grace Ge, Menlo Ventures
- Travis Connors, Building Ventures
- Saman Farid, Baidu Ventures
- Aaron Jacobson, New Enterprise Associates (NEA)
- Shaun Abrahamson, Urban Us
- Atin Batra, Twenty Seven Ventures
- Ben Bayat, NextGen Venture Partners
- Andrew Ackerman, Dreamit Ventures
- Duncan Turner, SOSV & HAX
- Zach Aarons, MetaProp VC
- Niki Pezeshki, Felicis Ventures
- Avidan Ross, Root Ventures
- Kia Nejatian, Plug & Play
- Miles Tabibian, Plug & Play
Rohit Sharma, True Ventures
True Ventures has been investing in industrial automation broadly for 4+ years and focusing on founders who bring technology to market that eliminates repetitive manual labor and multiplies human productivity by automating routine tasks.