AI construction startup Versatile raises a $20M Series A – TechCrunch

San Francisco-based construction startup Versatile is announcing today that it has raised a $20 million Series A. The round was led by Insight Partners and Entree Capital, along with existing investors Robert Bosch Venture Capital GmbH, Root Ventures and Conductive Ventures.

The round follows $8.5 million in funding, including a $5.5 million seed round that arrived in August of last year.

The URBAN-X accelerator alum has developed a piece of hardware designed to be mounted to a crane. From that vantage point, it’s capable of capturing and analyzing data across the construction site.

“You can only improve what you can measure, and at Versatile we are just scratching the surface of what we can do to create value for our users and use data to turn job sites into controlled manufacturing with fast feedback loops,” co-founder and CEO Meirav Oren said in a release tied to the news.

The company says it’s able to use that information to provide a picture of construction progress, with additional information on site materials, while targeting any potential redundancy in the space.

With around $10 trillion currently spent on construction each year, the industry is prime for some big-ticket investments. Particularly those startups that can promise more efficiency in the space.

The company says the round will be spent on accelerating the availability of its technology and developing additional AI components for users.