Bild AI — a five-month-old startup that uses artificial intelligence (AI) to analyze blueprints and streamline the preconstruction process — has raised $3.1 million in a funding round led by Khosla Ventures. Co-founder Roop Pal told Business Insider the startup would use the funds to hire engineers aggressively in order to expand its technology.
Bild came to being when the founders Puneet Sukhija and Pal discovered that manually working with construction blueprints to get material and cost estimates is a difficult and time-consuming process. It is also prone to human error, which can lead to tens of thousands of dollars in losses per project, making it difficult for builders and suppliers from getting new contracts.
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Bild AI’s software claims to automate blueprint processing — a process which usually costs up to $50 billion a year. Pal and Sukhija first came up with the idea at a Hack for Social Impact event in San Francisco, and were accepted into Y Combinator within days of meeting.
“I was really mostly keen on the issue of affordable housing,” Pal told Business Insider. “There’s an opportunity to apply my knowledge in computer vision and AI to really make an impact.”
Pal and Sukhija come from different professional backgrounds but they share a vision. Sukhija used to work in the housing development structure, and had overseen hundreds of construction processes, experiencing firsthand the frustration of working with complex blueprints. He was only 16, when he built his first house.
Fellow founder Pal previously worked at Google, before moving to Waymo where he built computer vision models to interpret complex traffic signal patterns for self-driving cars.
The startup’s early clients are material suppliers in the framing, flooring, and door businesses, predominantly for multifamily residences. It makes money by charging subscription fees.
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Pal also said that by cutting down preconstruction costs, Bild can save expenses for renters. “If you have elastic housing markets,” he said, “this cost passes through and people save on rent.”
Pal also said that as its blueprint-reading technology becomes more advanced, it will ultimately be used in the permitting process to catch compliance issues and cut down on the costly and bureaucratic back-and-forth for residential and non-residential projects alike. “If you reduce 1% of the cost of a hospital, that’s another hospital that we have the budget to build,” he said. “It can really make a big difference broadly.”
In addition to Bild, AI is being increasingly incorporated into other parts of the construction industry with firms like Shawmut and Suffolk relying on the technology to improve worker safety.