oculai: €2.5 million seed round for AI-supported processes on construction sites

Munich — oculai raises equity capi­tal of 2.5 million euros in a seed finan­cing round. With the fresh capi­tal, the cons­­truc­­tion-tech startup wants to invest in the further deve­lo­p­ment of the tech­no­logy and push its disse­mi­na­tion on cons­truc­tion sites.

The finan­cing round is led by High-Tech Grün­der­fonds, which has with oculai its 700. Invest­ment in the history of the seed inves­tor successfully comple­ted. In addi­tion, Bayern-Kapi­­tal, one of the most expe­ri­en­ced high-tech inves­tors in the coun­try, is parti­ci­pa­ting with funds from the REACT part of the Bayern Kapi­tal EFRE inno­va­tion fund, and the French-based VC fund Axeleo Capi­tal via its Contech-Proptech fund, which focu­ses on start­ups in Europe. The round is supple­men­ted by the Leonard acce­le­ra­tor program and other well-known private inves­tors. These inves­tors include Arno Zinke, ex-foun­­der and mana­ger of Auto­desk and Hexa­gon, Chris­toph Jentzsch, ex-foun­­der and CEO of Slock.it and corpus.ventures, and Tobias Ortmaier, ex-foun­­der and mana­ging direc­tor of Yuanda Robo­tics, voraus robo­tik and avatera.

oculai is an emer­ging digi­tiza­tion and AI solu­tion for cons­truc­tion compa­nies. For exam­ple, came­ras at high posi­ti­ons and previously unique deep-lear­­ning models are used to auto­ma­ti­cally record cons­truc­tion proces­ses. This gives users access to func­tions such as an auto­ma­ted target/actual sche­dule, self-writing daily cons­truc­tion reports or process key figu­res. With oculai, cons­truc­tion projects become more trans­pa­rent, produc­tive and plan­nable, while cons­truc­tion manage­ment work proces­ses are auto­ma­ted. Curr­ently, the solu­tion is mainly used in shell cons­truc­tion and on initial infra­struc­ture projects.

oculai camera

“Espe­ci­ally in the current times, the trans­for­ma­tion of the cons­truc­tion indus­try towards intel­li­gent produc­tion systems is beco­ming more and more important. We also notice this in the response to our product. With the fresh tail­wind, we can leverage this momen­tum and take big steps now,” said Constan­tin Kauff­mann, co-foun­­der and CEO of oculai

“oculai’s AI has the poten­tial to be a game-chan­­ger for process plan­ning in the cons­truc­tion indus­try. At HTGF, we are proud that oculai is our 700th company. Seed invest­ment is. An anni­ver­sary that shows how active and diverse the start-up and inno­va­tion land­scape in Germany is. With our new fund gene­ra­tion HTGF IV, around 500 million euros are available for invest­ments in promi­sing start-ups and tech­no­lo­gies. The larger group of fund inves­tors enables us to offer more added value for the port­fo­lio compa­nies and invest signi­fi­cantly more per company. We are plea­sed to be able to make a rele­vant contri­bu­tion to solving many chal­lenges by funding highly inno­va­tive start­ups,” Dr. Alex von Fran­ken­berg, Mana­ging Direc­tor of HTGF

“No matter how large or complex a cons­truc­tion project may be — oculai offers the perfect over­view. The foun­ding team has deve­lo­ped a unique AI for shell cons­truc­tion that can enorm­ously increase the higher level of auto­ma­tion and digi­tiza­tion urgen­tly needed in the indus­try,” explains Monika Steger, Mana­ging Direc­tor of Bayern Kapital

“The cons­truc­tion indus­try is one of the least digi­ti­zed indus­tries due to a harsh work envi­ron­ment and compli­ca­ted work­flows, which makes change manage­ment parti­cu­larly diffi­cult. Oculai achie­ves a return on invest­ment from day one with a holi­stic, turn­key solu­tion that enables cons­truc­tion mana­gers to stream­line their work­flow and produce useful data. This impro­ves the lear­ning curve from one project to the next,” explains Mathias Flattin, Part­ner & Mana­ging Direc­tor Axeleo Capital.

About oculai
oculai is a ConTech startup that uses came­ras and arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence to auto­ma­ti­cally record cons­truc­tion proces­ses and progress. The foun­ders Constan­tin Kauff­mann (CEO), Tim Sippl (CTO) and Yannik Mack (CFO/ COO) know each other from their studies at the Fried­rich Alex­an­der Univer­sity Erlan­­gen-Nure­m­­berg. The idea for the startup sprang from rese­arch into camera-based recor­ding of manual indus­trial proces­ses. The startup formed in seve­ral foun­der programs, such as the Digi­tal Tech Academy, Unter­neh­mer­TUM, and Zoll­hof Incu­ba­tor, and was subse­quently supported by the EXIST-Grün­­der­s­ti­­pen­­dium until oculai was offi­ci­ally foun­ded in July 2021. The company is now based in Munich and employs around 20 people. oculai’s product is an AI-powered soft­ware that reco­gni­zes and auto­ma­ti­cally docu­ments outdoor cons­truc­tion proces­ses from camera data. Users have access to an auto­ma­ted target/actual sche­dule, self-writing daily cons­truc­tion reports, produc­ti­vity metrics or walking routes, among other things, via a WebApp. Based on the auto­ma­ted docu­men­ta­tion and the coll­ec­ted data, there is a savings poten­tial of 7% of the shell cons­truc­tion costs and a time saving of 15% for site teams. https://www.oculai.de/

About Bayern Kapital
Bayern Kapi­tal GmbH, based in Lands­hut, is the venture/growth capi­tal company of the Free State of Bava­ria. It accom­pa­nies inno­va­tive high-tech compa­nies in the Free State through various growth phases, from seed to later stage, with equity capi­tal in the amount of 0.25 to 25 million euros. Bayern Kapi­tal often fills gaps in the VC sector in proven consor­tium constel­la­ti­ons with private inves­tors (busi­ness angels, family offices and corpo­rate ventures). Bayern Kapi­tal mana­ges specia­li­zed invest­ment funds with a volume of around 700 million euros. Since its foun­da­tion in 1995 on the initia­tive of the state govern­ment, the wholly owned subsi­diary of LfA Förder­bank Bayern has so far inves­ted around 400 million euros of its own equity capi­tal in around 300 start-ups and scale-ups in sectors such as life scien­ces, soft­ware & IT, mate­ri­als & new mate­ri­als, nano­tech­no­logy and envi­ron­men­tal tech­no­logy. As a result, more than 8,000 jobs have been perma­nently crea­ted in Bava­ria in sustainable compa­nies. The active port­fo­lio curr­ently compri­ses over 80 compa­nies. Examp­les of nume­rous ground­brea­king success stories that Bayern Kapi­tal has been invol­ved in at an early stage include EOS (today the world’s leading tech­no­logy provi­der in indus­trial 3D prin­ting of metals and plas­tics), Proglove, Fazua, SimS­cale, Scom­pler, egym, Parcel­lab, Cobrai­ner, Quan­tum Systems, Casavi, Riskme­thods, Tubu­lis, Cata­lym, Immu­nic, Sirion and many more. www.bayernkapital.de

About Axeleo Capital
Axeleo Capi­tal (AXC) is a venture capi­tal firm that supports EU start­ups from the (pre-)seed stage through specia­li­zed funds in proptech and B2Btech.
Axeleo Proptech I (AXP1) is a €40 million fund focu­sed on proptech and contech start­ups across Europe. Our proptech invest­ments include Bean­stock, BRXS, Bright Spaces, Check&Visit, Garantme, Myr.ai, Prello. Our B2BTech invest­ments include cyber secu­rity, fintech and enter­prise soft­ware compa­nies such as Alsid, Aplo, Cumul.io, Jenji, Joko, Trust­pair. https://www.axc.vc/

About Leonard
Leonard is the VINCI Group’s inno­va­tion and fore­sight plat­form. Leonard was crea­ted to envi­sion the future of the Group’s busi­nesses and is tasked with moni­to­ring emer­ging trends in VINCI’s areas of exper­tise and markets, iden­ti­fy­ing new growth oppor­tu­ni­ties and setting up incu­ba­tion and acce­le­ra­tor programs for employees as well as start-ups. To host these programs and foster exch­an­ges with all the people brea­king new ground in VINCI’s busi­ness lines, Leonard opened Leonard:Paris, a 4,500-square-meter labo­ra­tory in Paris. In 2020, Leonard formed a team to expand opera­ti­ons in Germany, Austria and Switzerland.
https://leonard.vinci.com/de .