Monumental lands $32m to scale bricklaying robots

Monumental has raised a $32m Series B led by Khosla Ventures as the Amsterdam startup pushes more of its bricklaying robots onto live construction sites in Britain and, for the first time, the United States. Existing investors Plural and Hummingbird, which backed the company’s $25m round in early 2024, also joined the new financing.

The company said the money will help it grow its engineering team, expand its fleet across Europe, deepen its UK presence, teach its robots more than one trade, and fund its US launch later this year. Monumental says it now operates more than 150 robots, working on active sites rather than in demo environments.

Its machines are fully electric and use sensors, computer vision, and a small crane arm to place brick and mortar. They are coordinated through the company’s software platform, Atrium. So far, Monumental says its robots have built the walls of more than 100 homes in the Netherlands and the UK, as well as a school, community centre, hotel, and a section of Amsterdam canal wall. Nearly half of those homes were completed in the past three months, up from eight in the previous quarter.

What stands out is the business model. Contractors do not buy the robots; they hire Monumental as a subcontractor and pay for the finished wall. That means Monumental keeps the burden of owning, maintaining, and operating the machines itself — an unusual setup in an industry where robotics firms have typically tried to sell hardware directly to builders.

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“The world simply does not have enough people to build what it needs, and that shortage will not be solved by another app or another robot doing backflips on stage. It takes machines that turn up on site and lay real brick all day, to spec.”

UK bricklayer shortage

Britain is the immediate focus because of its shortage of bricklayers. The government wants 1.5 million new homes. The Home Builders Federation says the country needs tens of thousands more bricklayers to deliver them; Monumental puts that figure at 20,000, while other readings of the HBF numbers put it closer to 25,000. Against that, Monumental cites about 1,990 completed bricklaying apprenticeships in 2024.

The company argues the housing gap is wider still. The Centre for Policy Studies estimates the UK has a housing shortfall of 6.5 million homes, with 446 dwellings per 1,000 people — the second worst in Europe, behind a continental average of 542.

“Construction costs have exploded while the industry itself has barely changed in decades. We know how to build, we’ve just made it too expensive and too slow.”

Founded in 2021 by Salar al Khafaji and Sebastiaan Visser, Monumental is pitching investors on deployment rather than a single technical breakthrough. The founders previously built Dutch data-visualisation startup Silk, which Palantir acquired in 2016 in what the article describes as effectively a team purchase. That same forward-deployed engineering approach now shapes Monumental’s robotics operation, with engineers working on site alongside customers.

The opportunity is attracting rivals too. Among them is All3, another European construction startup that raised $25m for legged robots aimed at housebuilding.