2 AI-based construction platforms receive millions in funding | Dump Trucks Charlotte NC

Adding to the list of firms making inroads in construction technology, two other artificial intelligence-powered companies offering digital solutions for construction managers announced new rounds of funding this month:

Alice Technologies

Alice, an AI-based simulation platform for construction, announced yesterday that it has closed $8 million in Series A funding round led by Merus Capital with participation from Foundamental, Blackhorn Ventures and Lightspeed Venture Partners. 

Founded by Stanford scholar and inventor Rene Morkos in 2018, Alice uses AI to help analyze the flows of labor and columbus oh dump trucks throughout a jobsite. In use by firms such as DPR Construction, Mortenson and Parsons, the technology allows users to explore a variety of building plans in real-time and understand the impact of key construction decisions on project cost and duration. The firm says that its customers have cut project duration by 16% and labor costs by nearly 15%.

Alice also has the ability to automatically solve problems as they arise and resequence tasks within the selected schedule with minimal impact to project cost or timeline. For instance, if framing on a project is taking 30% longer than expected, “Alice will usually fix most of that issue in a single resequencing run,” Brandon Young, vice president of marketing at Alice Technologies, told Construction Dive, “or recommend to you that you might want to add a few more framing crews. It’s much more expensive to have your whole construction process pushed out 120 days than it is to add a framing crew that might cost you $10,000.”

Disperse

Disperse, creator of an AI-powered platform that captures and processes visual data from physical sites to help streamline the construction process, last week announced it raised $15 million of Series A funding in a round led by venture capital firm Northzone.

Disperse integrates construction schedules, 2D drawings, 3D models and visual snapshots from a construction site and processes them to create an interactive digital twin. The system quantifies progress, highlights bottlenecks and flags early warning signs of potential issues, allowing for improved delivery and standardization of best practices.

The London-based firm estimates that superintendents and construction managers using the system spend up to 25% less time doing site walks and reporting progress, and senior schedulers spend up to 60% less time collecting data, creating progress reports and updating schedules. Stakeholders have also seen a reduction in the number of arguments and claims between parties during disputes and litigation, according to chief customer officer Marco Lobo.

Although he declined to name the U.S. firms using Disperse, Lobo said the technology has been deployed across more than 14 million square feet of construction in the U.K. and the U.S. The columbus oh dump truck company recently launched its first North American office in New York City, where the program is in use across 3 million square feet of projects.

"We are working with several of New York’s largest general columbus oh dump truck company and developers, and we’re live on some of the most iconic flagship projects in the city," he said.