ICON, an Austin-based developer of advanced construction technologies including robotics, software, and building materials, announced it has completed a $35 million Series A round of financing led by Moderne Ventures.
Constance Freedman, Founder and Managing Partner of Moderne Ventures and Khan Tasinga, Director at Palantir Technologies, join the Board of Directors.
Other investors that participated in the funding round include BIG-Bjarke Ingels Group, CAZ Investments, Citi, Crosstimbers Ventures, Ironspring Ventures, Next Coast Ventures, Oakhouse Partners, Trust Ventures, Vulcan Capital and Wavemaker Partners.
The current financing will be used to accelerate the development of its printers, create a variety of home types and designs and enhance its core technology stack to further its mission of using advanced construction technologies to advance humanity.
“Traditional building and construction techniques have not improved since B.C., they have only become more expensive,” said Constance Freedman, Founder and Managing Partner at Moderne Ventures. “The results are vast deltas in affordability, limitations on design and both time and efficiency challenges. I believe we will see an evolution of the entire home-buying value chain, especially when integrated with other technologies like digital transactions and augmented reality. Consumers will be able to order, build, design and purchase a brand-new home in a matter of days–something that’s truly innovative and truly disruptive. We are excited to support ICON as it continues to change the world.”
“In early 2018, there were no 3D-printed homes in North America and today, there are almost twenty and we’re gearing up for hundreds more,” said Jason Ballard, Co-founder and CEO of ICON. “We anticipate more high-velocity progress in the years ahead to help bring housing and construction into the modern world and in-line with humanity’s highest hopes. The present challenges the world is facing due to new coronavirus have only emphasized the tremendous gap between the housing that we have and the housing that we need. We are grateful to those who have believed in our mission from the beginning and are excited to have a larger team of global investors joining us in our belief that the housing of our future must be different than the housing we have known.”
“We believe additive manufacturing will play a transformative role in the future of construction and with our investment and partnership with ICON we can contribute actively to this ongoing transformation,” said Bjarke Ingels, Founder and Creative Director, BIG-Bjarke Ingels Group. “With ICON we are pioneering new frontiers – both materially, technologically and environmentally – so putting some skin in the game became inevitable. The design industry has become revolutionized through the adoption of Computer Aided Design and Building Information Management. Regardless of how digital the documentation has become, designs still get built practically the same way as always. Robotic manufacturing will enable us to eliminate the loss in translation from data to matter and allow us to fabricate homes at great speed, with less waste, and with higher accuracy than today.”
The investment brings ICON’s total funding since launching its revolutionary technology to $44 million. ICON announced $9 million in seed funding led by Oakhouse Partners in October 2018. Seed round investors included Cielo Property Group, D.R. Horton and Emaar among others.
The startup will be expanding their team with numerous roles across robotics, off-planet construction, materials science, software engineering, architecture, building science and operations.
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