BUILDOTS

Roy Danon, Aviv Leibovici, and Yakir Sundry met through Israel's tech scene. They noticed that the construction industry, one of the largest industries on the planet, had almost zero real-time data about what was happening on job sites.

Project managers relied on manual walkthroughs, spreadsheets, and gut feelings to track progress.

The founders realized that 360-degree cameras mounted on hard hats could passively capture images as workers walked through a site. Feed those images to computer vision AI, and you can compare what actually exists to what the BIM (Building Information Model) says should exist.

The gap between the two is the problem.

They launched Buildots in 2018 and quickly landed pilots with major construction firms in Israel and the UK. The product worked immediately because the pain was so acute.

A typical large construction project runs 20-30% over budget, and delays cost millions per month. Even catching one problem a week earlier can save a project hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Buildots charges a subscription fee per project. Construction companies outfit their workers with 360-degree cameras (provided by Buildots or using off-the-shelf models).

Workers wear the cameras on their hard hats during normal walkthroughs. The captured footage is uploaded to Buildots' cloud platform, where AI compares it to the project's BIM model.

The platform generates progress reports, identifies deviations from plans, and flags delays before they cascade. The pricing is tied to project size and duration.

For a large commercial building that costs $100 million+ to construct, the Buildots subscription is a tiny fraction of the total budget.

The core product is the Buildots construction monitoring platform. AI analyzes 360-degree footage and compares it against BIM models to track progress, identify quality issues, and flag schedule deviations.

The dashboard shows project managers exactly which tasks are on track, behind, or done incorrectly.

Buildots also offers deviation detection, which catches cases where construction does not match the architectural plans. A wall built 5 centimeters off position is easy to miss with human eyes but easy for AI to catch.

Finding these issues early, before drywall goes up, saves enormous rework costs.

Buildots grew by targeting the UK and European construction markets first, where large general contractors were actively looking for digital transformation tools. They landed contracts with companies like Wates Group and BAM Construct, two of the UK's largest builders.

The hard hat camera approach was a deliberate product decision. Competitors like OpenSpace require dedicated camera operators to walk sites.

Buildots cameras are passive. Workers just wear them and go about their day.

This means data capture happens automatically with zero behavior change, which dramatically increases adoption rates on job sites.

Construction is one of the hardest industries to sell technology into. Workers are hands-on people who do not want to fiddle with gadgets.

Project managers are skeptical of anything that adds steps to their day. And the industry has been burned by tech promises before.

Buildots also faces competition from OpenSpace and Doxel, both of which offer construction monitoring with slightly different approaches. The market is big enough for multiple players, but winning enterprise contracts requires proving that the AI actually catches problems human eyes miss.

Every false positive erodes trust.

TLV Partners and Lightspeed Venture Partners co-led Buildots' $30 million Series B in 2021. O.G.

Tech Ventures and Maor Investments participated. TLV Partners is one of Israel's top VC firms and has deep connections in the Israeli construction tech ecosystem.

Lightspeed's involvement brought Silicon Valley credibility and US expansion support. The combined $60 million raised gives Buildots runway to expand globally.