Tera Ventures leads the $2 million seed round to AI Clearing
AI Clearing, Inc. raised $2 million in seed funding to accelerate the development of its artificial intelligence solution for monitoring the progress of construction projects, which top North American and European contractors are already using to eliminate errors and fraud.
Tera Ventures led the round, with co-investors Inovo Venture Partners and Innovation Nest also taking equity stakes in the Texas-based ConstructionTech startup. Using technology developed at its R&D center in Warsaw, Poland, AI Clearing analyzes overhead images, geospatial data and CAD/BIM designs to monitor the progress of infrastructure projects, ensuring that production is on track, on time and in line with designs.
The global market for construction progress monitoring is worth $49 billion a year. Today’s human-based processes, prone to error and manipulation, mean that one-quarter of infrastructure construction projects globally end in litigation. This drives up costs by an average of $43 million per project.
“Anyone who’s ever managed even a small construction project knows how easy it is for things to go wrong, and with large infrastructure work the potential for problems is only magnified,” said AI Clearing CEO & co-founder Michael Mazur.
“Our data analytics platform makes it easy for our clients to quickly identify and correct errors, saving time and avoiding costly rework,” added CTO & co-founder Adam Wisniewski. “Fixing errors usually takes up 4-8% of a typical construction project’s budget, so the potential savings are huge.”
AI Clearing’s clients include PCL Construction, one of the top 10 contractors in the U.S., with about 1,000 large projects a year, and Vinci Group, the world’s largest construction corporation. Clients rely on AI Clearing’s solution to provide crucial data insights on complex work sites.
“We like AI Clearing because it addresses an area that is perfect for the application of artificial intelligence, in an industry that is long overdue for automated solutions to accurately and dynamically track complex, evolving projects,” said James McDougall, a founding partner at Tera Ventures. “The AI Clearing team is leading the industry, and our investment will help them to extend and maintain that lead.”
In recent years the construction industry has been collecting digital field data on a truly massive scale, combined with a significant increase in digital designs and datasets. AI Clearing’s solution allows them to use more of this data, and use it more efficiently. Human-driven processes can analyze only a fraction of the information available, while AI Clearing approaches 100%, and can complete analytics in three hours that would take humans three weeks.
“Financial and strategic investors continue to fuel a rapid expansion of the construction technology industry. The pandemic has only served to provide additional urgency,” McKinsey wrote in the October report Rise of the platform era: The next chapter in construction technology. The global consulting firm identified data analytics platforms as one of seven key areas of opportunity in constructiontech for startups and venture capital.
“Unlike every other solution we’ve seen in this area, AI Clearing’s product is near-real-time and completely hands-free, which is one of the main reasons we decided to invest,” said Inovo Partner Maciej Małysz. “Clients don’t have to spend a single minute on analytics; they receive everything via a simple dashboard or direct integration with their systems.
About AI Clearing – https://www.aiclearing.com/
AI Clearing, Inc. offers a proprietary artificial intelligence solution that uses semantic segmentation to analyze images and data from construction designs and work sites, enabling contractors and investors to track the progress of infrastructure projects up to 144 times faster than typical human-powered processes.
Nathaniel Espino
nathaniel.espino@aldgate.pl
About Tera Ventures – www.tera.vc
Tera Ventures is a venture capital firm based in Tallinn, Estonia and focused on exceptional founders from Estonia, Scandinavia and CEE disrupting digital space globally. Tera builds presence and networks in the markets where our portfolio companies want to expand to – the UK, the US, and Asia. With a presence in Estonia, Finland, and California, Tera Ventures is supported by a global advisory network and provides portfolio companies with access to expertise and hands-on support necessary to grow from seed stage to successful exit.
James McDougall
james@tera.vc