August Robotics Ltd., a robotics automation company for construction and industrial applications, today announced it raised has $30 million in new funding led by Big Pi Ventures. 

Existing investors Blackbird, Skip Capital, Tanarra and Future Family Office also participated in the round, alongside incoming U.S.-based construction specialist GS Futures. 

The company said the new financing will fast-track physical-world workflows using software-coordinated robotics to massively accelerate critical building tasks. 

August provides a modular robotic platform that can ingest projects, localize robots, plan and execute tasks autonomously, coordinate multiple robots and operate safely around humans. The robots can also recognize and rectify errors in real time, saving time and energy for workers on the floor. 

The company recently released a robotic product that can downward-drill precision holes for large, prefabricated sites. This is especially important in large-scale construction, such as hyperscale data centers for artificial intelligence and high-performance computing. 

In these cases, drilling is one of those unglamorous jobs that must happen before the more visible work can proceed. Once a concrete slab is poured, crews need thousands of precisely placed holes, so server racks, power systems, cooling equipment and other fixtures can be bolted into place. If those holes are slow to drill, or even slightly off, the next crew must wait or redo the work. 

“In recent months, our drilling robots have fundamentally changed what is possible in data center construction, compressing construction schedules and helping our customers to bring critical infrastructure online faster than ever before,” founder and Chief Executive Alex Wyatt said. 

August Robotics’ drilling robots are designed to take coordinates from construction plans, move across the floor and drill those holes automatically, turning a repetitive, physically punishing task into a faster, more precise workflow. 

The company said its robots have been “battle tested” in a strategic partnership with Stanley Black & Decker Inc.’s DeWalt brand and have already been deployed in the field across high-profile hyperscale construction environments in the United States and Europe. 

The company’s first robotic product, Lionel, provides autonomous floor-marking capabilities for exhibitions and large indoor spaces. The Lionel robot has been deployed at scale with clients on more than five continents, providing more than 300 million square feet of area marked around the world to date. 

Photo: August Robotics