• The funding round was led by Miles Ahead, with participation from Robotics & Discrete Automation and Robotics & Automation Ventures (ABB RA Ventures), Rival Holdings, Morgan Stanley, and others.
• Automated Architecture (AUAR) licenses its tech stack of robotic micro-factories and AI to enable home-builders to deliver low-energy timber homes at scale and affordable prices.
• The company’s tech stack is low CapEx, can be quickly set up and allows home-builders to reduce costs and save time, increasing their productivity. The payback time is less than six months.
• The investment will support the company’s growth of its partner license network with ten more partners and expanding operations in the US.

London, UK. 20th March 2024: Construction tech startup Automated Architecture (AUAR) has raised a £2.6M Seed round to support its mission of building sustainable and affordable homes using its micro-factories. This funding round is led by deep-tech and AI fund Miles Ahead alongside Robotics & Automation Ventures (ABB RA Ventures) – the venture capital unit of the ABB Robotics & Discrete Automation business, Rival Holdings, Morgan Stanley, Vandenbussche Group, Bacchus Venture Capital, and angel investors Nicolas Bearelle, Atomico Scout Stefano Bernardi and Dob Todorov. The investment will support the company’s growth of its partner license network with ten more partners and expanding operations in the US.

AUAR partners with home builders and contractors in Europe and North America to build the first distributed micro-factory network for sustainable timber housing. The company licenses its low CapEx robotic micro-factories and tech stack to a network of existing home builders, creating a massive revenue opportunity for these companies to deliver low-energy homes at the price of normal homes and at scale. AUAR’s design algorithms can generate endless design variations adapted to local sites.

The company offers a different vision for the built environment, where automation is not centralised into large factories but empowers local ecosystems of communities, contractors, architects and developers to build better homes. They are targeting 40 license partners for its micro-factories by 2030, with a capacity to produce over 75,000 energy-efficient homes and remove millions of tons of CO2 each year.

AUAR was founded in 2019 by Mollie Claypool, CEO, and Gilles Retsin, CTO and Chief Architect, after working together for over a decade researching how robotics, generative design, and AI could radically transform housing and how we live.

Mollie Claypool, Co-Founder and CEO of AUAR, said, “There is a huge and urgent need for affordable low-energy homes, but currently, these are expensive to build and difficult to deliver at scale. Building high-quality, sustainable timber homes is hard to scale, but AUAR is here to change that. Robots and AI allow us to deliver high-quality housing at significantly lower costs, increasing margins and productivity while lowering the cost for the end users. By using our solution, construction companies are incentivised to  meet much-needed sustainability targets.”

Gilles Retsin, Co-Founder and CTO of AUAR, said, “AUAR has developed all the tech home builders need to develop, produce, and build affordable low-energy homes while increasing margins and productivity. Our technology is low CapEx, doesn’t require big factories, and pays itself back in a few months.”

The construction industry is one of the world’s largest sectors, with $10 trillion annually spent on construction-related goods and services. However, according to a McKinsey report, the sector has an intractable productivity problem, costing the global economy $1.6 trillion annually. Existing solutions, such as modular factories, are CapEx-heavy, struggle to deliver and take years to set up. AUAR provides a solution to this issue where its tech stack of robotic micro-factories and software reduces upfront investment costs for builders, increasing their productivity while derisking projects and helping with labour shortages. 

Luc Burgelman, Founding Partner at Miles Ahead, said, “AUAR’s combination of licensed hardware and software has the potential to change the game as we know it. Its construction approach will not only be a massive help in fighting the low levels of productivity observed in the sector, saving companies valuable time, moreover, it will be instrumental in meeting sustainability goals.”

AUAR’s underlying data model makes all costs and other data known upfront to their clients and manufacturing partners. The company is already working with two pilot customers – Rival Holdings and Vandenbussche NV.

Brad Crawford, CEO at Rival Holdings, said, “We’re delighted to collaborate with AUAR both as an investor and a customer. The ability to efficiently incorporate their solution into our business makes this partnership dynamic and strategic, and we can’t wait to see what this funding round will enable their team to accomplish.

“Craig McDonnell, Managing Director, Business Line Industries at ABB Robotics, added, “By re-imagining how robotic automation can be used as part of the construction process, AUAR’s approach has the potential to completely transform the house building sector. By making full use of the extended possibilities offered by robots, AUAR’s concept will enable sustainable homes to be built faster, more cost-effectively and with greatly reduced waste while ensuring the highest levels of quality and consistency.”

AUAR is hiring across its robotics, product and marketing teams as part of the funding. 
For more information, go to automatedarchitecture.io

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About Automated Architecture
Automated Architecture (AUAR) – ‘our’ for short – is a tech company building a distributed micro-factory network for sustainable timber housing. AUAR offers a different vision for the built environment, where automation is not centralised into large factories but empowers local ecosystems of communities, contractors, architects and developers to build better homes. Learn more: Website | LinkedIn

About Miles Ahead 
Miles Ahead is a Venture Studio helping first-time founders of Deep Tech & AI startups grow faster by ‘producing’ and funding their business in an empowering environment. Our name is inspired by the Miles Davis album. Just like great music, successful ventures are built through a combination of individual talent and strong team chemistry. https://www.milesahead.ai/

About ABB Robotics & Discrete Automation
ABB Robotics & Discrete Automation, as one of the world’s leading robotics and machine automation suppliers, is the only company with a comprehensive and integrated portfolio covering robots, Autonomous Mobile Robots and machine automation solutions, designed and orchestrated by our value-creating software. We help companies of all sizes and sectors – from automotive to electronics and logistics – become more resilient, flexible and efficient. ABB Robotics & Discrete Automation supports customers in the transition towards the connected and collaborative factory of the future. The business area employs approximately 11,000 people at over 100 locations in approximately 53 countries. go.abb/robotics 

About ABB Robotics & Automation VenturesABB Robotics & Automation Ventures (ABB RA Ventures) is the business-led venture capital unit of ABB Robotics & Discrete Automation, and part of ABB’s investment framework, ABB Ventures. Since its formation in 2009, ABB Ventures, formerly ABB Technology Ventures (ATV), has invested around $400 million into startups having a close fit to its electrification, robotics, automation, and motion portfolio. For more information, visit www.abb.com/ventures

Rival Holdings
Rival invests in organisations in the built ecosystem with the collective goal of catalysing innovations that will actively transform the industry. We rival the status quo by empowering visionary companies to pursue disruptive technologies and techniques that will reshape how the built world operates. Our highly skilled team believes the return on these strategic investments will transform lives, communities, and the world for the better. For more information visit rival.re.

Founder BiosMollie ClaypoolCo-Founder & Chief Executive Officer
Mollie is Co-Founder and CEO of Automated Architecture (AUAR). As a thought leader working at the intersection of architectural systems design and automation, Mollie believes in radically changing the way we build so we can change the way we live. Key to this for her are issues of labour as well as material and social sustainability. As an author, she co-wrote “Robotic Building: Architecture in the Age of Automation” (Detail Edition 2019) and authored the SPACE10 report “The Digital in Architecture: Then, Now and in the Future” (2019). Informing her work at AUAR is her background as an educator and activist, having been involved for many years in environmental, housing and maternal rights activism. She is an Associate Professor at The Bartlett School of Architecture, UCL, where she has co-directed the award-winning AUAR Labs, which won Architect Journal’s Social Sustainability Award in 2021. She has also been a visiting professor at the Cluster for Excellence Integrative Computational Design and Construction for Architecture at the University of Stuttgart and was a faculty member at the AA School of Architecture. Mollie studied architecture at Pratt Institute in New York City and architecture theory in London, where she graduated from the Architectural Association. She is a practising birthkeeper and a Community Elder for Doulas Without Borders, advising volunteers to support the most vulnerable birthing people in UK society. She is a mother to two small kids, and in her spare time, she can be found working with her hands in a community allotment. She lives in Bristol, UK.

Gilles RetsinCo-Founder & Chief Technology Officer/Chief ArchitectGilles Retsin is Co-Founder and CTO/Chief Architect of Automated Architecture (AUAR). A self-taught programmer and architect, Gilles has worked in some of the best architecture practices and is as much about the nitty gritty details and robots as he is about the big picture. Gilles’ practice, research and teaching focus on housing at the intersection of design with technology, sustainability and socio-political questions. His design work and critical discourse have been internationally recognised through awards, lectures and exhibitions at major cultural institutions such as the Museum of Art and Design in New York, the Royal Academy in London, The Vitra Design Museum and the Centre Pompidou in Paris and universities such as MIT, Sci-Arc, Stanford, HKU and ETH. He has written extensively on architecture, computational design and robotics, publishing over 100 articles in the past decade. He is an Associate Professor at The Bartlett School of Architecture, UCL, where he co-directs AUAR Labs, a research lab focused on innovating the full value chain of housing. He studied architecture in Belgium, Chile and the UK, where he graduated from the Architectural Association. He obtained his PhD from RMIT in Australia. Gilles is passionate about design, tech, timber, cities, economics and politics. He lives in London, UK.