Funding Buildots Raised $130M, and Its Customer List Is the Argument O.G. Venture Partners led the round, taking Buildots' total funding to $297 million. The users named in the announcement — Intel, Digital Realty, Turner, JE Dunn, HOCHTIEF, Bouygues — are the firms building the data centres and fabs, which is where construction's schedule risk has concentrated. Hugo Pegley · Sep 15, 2026
Funding Buzz Solutions Raised $20M to Inspect the Grid the AI Buildout Is About to Overload An oversubscribed Series A led by Texas-based S3 Ventures, closed the same week Texas paused 474 gigawatts of interconnection requests. The pitch is that utilities must improve reliability and absorb AI load growth simultaneously — and cannot hire their way through the imagery. Hugo Pegley · Aug 18, 2026
Analysis Texas Paused 474 Gigawatts of Grid Requests. The Next Day, Caterpillar Had Its Best Quarter Ever. On August 3, Governor Abbott ordered an audit of every data center in ERCOT's interconnection queue. On August 4, Caterpillar posted a record $20.5 billion quarter on data center demand and raised guidance. Both facts are true, and the gap between them is the whole story. Hugo Pegley · Aug 18, 2026
Funding Exclaim Robotics Raised $4.95M for the Job Nobody Wants: Reaching Into a Live 800-Volt Rack A Zurich startup founded by a former NVIDIA and Google roboticist has come out of stealth to build machines that service AI data centres. The wedge is not labour cost — it is that the electrical architecture of these buildings is turning routine maintenance into hazardous work. Hugo Pegley · Aug 16, 2026
Funding Dili Raised $15M to Read Every Payroll Line, Not a Sample of Them Khosla Ventures led a $15 million Series A into a company selling something unglamorous: prevailing-wage and Davis-Bacon compliance for federally funded energy, data center and manufacturing projects. The pitch is that sampling-based auditing is a bet, and AI makes it unnecessary. Hugo Pegley · Aug 3, 2026
Analysis Europe Just Opened Bidding on Seven AI Gigafactories. Someone Has to Build Them. The European Commission launched its AI Gigafactories call on 30 July, aiming to mobilise more than €30 billion for up to seven AI compute campuses. Proposals close 12 November, selection lands in early 2027, and the winners are expected to be operating within 18 months of that — a construction timeline worth reading closely. Hugo Pegley · Aug 3, 2026
Funding Gritt Raised $26M to Put AI on Equipment Contractors Already Own The Carnegie Mellon-founded startup came out of stealth with a Series A led by Obvious Ventures and a thesis that runs against the field: don't build the robot. Build the intelligence, and bolt it to a rented skid steer. Hugo Pegley · Jul 30, 2026
Analysis New York Paused Data Center Permits. Fifteen Days Later, an Analyst Cut Caterpillar. Executive Order 62 froze state permitting for data centers of 50 MW and up. On July 29, Baird downgraded Caterpillar and cut its target from $1,200 to $900, naming that moratorium. The constraint on the AI buildout is turning out to be permitting, not power. Hugo Pegley · Jul 30, 2026
Product Torus comes out of stealth with AI agents for engineering documents The Y Combinator–backed startup is building AI that reads P&IDs, datasheets and specs across an entire capital project to catch cross-document errors before they reach the field. Hugo Pegley · Jul 15, 2026
Funding Build raises $8.5M to point AI agents at development's messy front end Index Ventures led the seed round for Build, an 'agentic development firm' that pairs AI agents with human experts to compress site selection and due diligence for data centers, energy and industrial projects. Hugo Pegley · Jul 14, 2026
Funding Xpanner Raises $18M to Sell Construction Automation Like a Software Subscription The Korean startup doesn't sell robots — it retrofits the machines contractors already own and charges for autonomy by the task. With revenue that tripled to $21 million last year and a profit already on the books, it is one of the few physical-AI companies that can point to a working business model. Hugo Pegley · Jun 18, 2026
Analysis OpenSpace Has Now Documented 1,000 Data Centers. That Number Tells You Something About Where Construction AI Is Actually Being Deployed. Half of those 1,000 projects were added in the past year alone. The milestone positions OpenSpace as the de facto construction intelligence standard for the AI infrastructure boom — and raises the question of what that dataset is worth. Hugo Pegley · Jun 15, 2026
Funding August Robotics Raises $30M to Send Autonomous Drilling Robots Into the Data-Center Boom The Series B, led by Big Pi Ventures, backs a robotics company that has quietly tied its fortunes to the most capital-intensive construction trend of the decade: the global build-out of AI data centers. Hugo Pegley · Jun 13, 2026
