Poland-born construction tech startup AI Clearing is on a roll.
It’s just signed a deal with one of the biggest construction sites in the world — and raised a $14m Series A led by New York-based VC Prudence.
What does AI Clearing do?
AI Clearing helps businesses track how work is progressing on big construction sites like highways, solar farms, airports and railway tracks.
Its platform analyses data from images captured by drones, a mobile app used by onsite workers and construction project designs and schedules. It uses all that information to give its customers a fully automated daily update on a project’s progress — for example, how many cubic squares of concrete were poured last night on site, and how that aligns with the timeline. It can also detect any discrepancies in the work’s progress, such as delays and budget overruns.
AI Clearing’s main clients include construction companies, businesses owning infrastructure such as utilities, road or railways operators, and financial investors. It’s already worked with companies like French construction giant VINCI, Canada’s PCL Construction and Portugal’s oil and gas company Galp. It has also just signed a contract with NEOM — a new urban area planned in Saudi Arabia — which is one of the biggest construction sites worldwide, involving more than 200 projects to be built over the next decade.
AI Clearing was founded in 2020 by two Polish founders, Adam Wiśniewski and Michael Mazur, and is headquartered in Austin, Texas. Its R&D hub is located in Warsaw. It employs more than 60 people worldwide.
What’s the market like?
Construction companies are already pretty well equipped with software that allows them to organise construction work through designing, scheduling and budgeting. But so far progress and quality tracking of project delivery has been poorly digitised. Progress made on construction sites is usually tracked manually by sampling 5-10% of the construction area, which often results in substantial budget overruns and project delays.
This is only worsened by a growing global deficit of quality surveyors and field engineers — since 2020 the number of construction engineers retiring from the industry in the US and Western Europe is two times higher than the number of the newcomers, according to the startup’s data.
AI Clearing says it can track work much more quickly using AI. The startup says existing solutions allow customers to analyse the work progress on 10km of highway in around 30 man-days, whereas its platform would take just 12 hours to complete the same task.
Where will AI Clearing spend the money?
AI Clearing says it wants to use the fresh funding to boost its sales, marketing and customer success teams in the US, Europe and the Middle East.
Who has invested?
- Prudence, a US VC
- FJ Labs, a US VC
- Tera Ventures, an Estonian VC
- Inovo, a Polish VC
- Innovation Nest, a Polish VC
