# Monumental: full site text

> Monumental builds autonomous robots that lay bricks on real construction sites today. Founded in 2021 and headquartered in Amsterdam, Monumental has grown to more than 130 people, raised more than $60 million, and built more than 100 homes across 40+ construction projects.

This document inlines the full text of Monumental's company and mission pages. For the linked site map, see https://www.monumental.co/llms.txt.

## Key facts

- Founded: 2021
- Headquarters: Amsterdam, Netherlands
- Team: 130+ people
- Funding raised: $60M+
- Homes built: 100+
- Projects delivered: 40+
- Robots in the fleet: 100+

## The company

Source: https://www.monumental.co/about

Monumental was founded in 2021 by [Salar](https://www.linkedin.com/in/salark) and [Sebas](https://www.linkedin.com/in/sebastiaan-visser-443b91190/), on the idea that high-quality housing should stay affordable even as skilled labor becomes harder to find. Since then, we’ve built a vertically-integrated product with our own robot hardware, software, and machine vision pipeline and deployed it with real customers.

We’ve raised more than $60 million in funding from top-tier investors including Khosla Ventures, Plural, Hummingbird, Northzone, Foundamental, and NP-Hard.

Our robots are in use with customers on real construction sites across the Netherlands and the UK today: they’ve built walls for 100+ homes, plus a school, a community center, a hotel, and 150+ m of canals.

Monumental is based near the Artis zoo in the Plantage, in the city center of Amsterdam. We have a beautiful office with an in-house workshop and robot testing facility. We’re explicitly not a hybrid or remote-first company: we enjoy collaborating 5 days a week at the office.

We’re more than 130 people today. Our team spans a wide spectrum of expertise (mechanical, electrical, software and machine vision) coming from companies like Palantir, Qualcomm, DeepMind, Tesla, WaveOptics, Dyson, Meta, and Shopify. We come from a wide range of diverse backgrounds: big tech, startups, small shops, and many other places.

Almost none of us have a robotics or construction background: we look for people who can pick up new things fast and get excited by new industries and technologies.

### Mission

Autonomous robots on the building site, and what that unlocks for housing, speed, and beauty.

## Mission & Vision

Source: https://www.monumental.co/our-vision

Construction is the last major industry untouched by modern technology. We’re changing that with autonomous robots on the construction site.

### Why construction

Over the last century, almost every industry has improved. Construction is the one that went backwards.

Chemicals, apparel, manufactured goods, consumer electronics, transportation: across the board they’ve grown cheaper and better, and society’s net wealth has risen with them. And while some industries such as healthcare get critiqued for rising costs, it’s at least hard to argue against major improvements there as well, from basic vaccines to advanced genetic therapies.

None of this is true for construction: in almost every possible way, construction has become more expensive (on an inflation-adjusted basis); slower; less durable and less aesthetically pleasing. In most cities around the world, the most expensive and desirable buildings today are also the oldest buildings-something that’s hard to imagine in any other industry. Construction feels like the last industry left completely untouched by modern technology.

The relative inefficiency of the construction industry is no secret. Unlike other industries, where advances in technology have continuously increased what a single worker can accomplish, construction remains as labor intensive as ever. Since 1945 in the US, productivity in manufacturing has increased 8.6 times. In the early 1800s, agriculture employed over 80% of US workers - today, it employs less than 2%. But construction productivity has only increased by 10% since 1945 - and construction productivity in the US has actually decreased since the 1960s.

Buildings are built no faster today than in the past. The Empire State Building, completed in 1931, famously took merely 410 days to build. The Chrysler Building, completed in 1930, took 563 days. But 432 Park Avenue, completed in 2015, took over 1500 days. Average time to build a single family house has gone from 4.8 months in 1971 (the earliest year data is available), to 7 months in 2019. Even scaling this by average house size (around 1600 square feet in the early 70s, compared to over 2600 square feet today), we’re still slower today.

Moreover, construction sits economically upstream of most other activities. It’s the machine that creates all of our built environment. It represents 13% of worldwide GDP. It’s the source of 11% of global CO2 emissions (plus an additional 28% of annual CO2 emissions from the energy use of those finished buildings.) It will only get more expensive to build due to a secular trend of declining skilled labor. Not enough people are working on these challenges relative to the importance and scale of this industry.

Most people working on solving this problem today are trying to do it off-site, using pre-fab and modular components. This approach has been tried for decades and we believe it will only work in a niche context. In our view, the solution must be to fix things on-site, where the end-product needs to be.

### Our vision

We want a future where everyone can afford a high-quality house or apartment in a beautiful city or village.

We believe that the only way to turn this vision into reality is to fully automate on-site construction. To break the spell of stagnation in construction we plan to bring the full power of software, robotics and machine vision to the construction site. The core technology we are developing is a suite of autonomous, electric robots which can work around the clock. Our approach will bring two main benefits:

#### Affordable housing

Everyone needs housing and housing sits upstream of almost all other economic inputs for people. The lack of affordable homes for people is tearing apart the seams of society in many developed countries today, while construction is only getting more expensive as the number of craftsmen continues to decline.

#### Beautiful artisanship

Unless you’re a full-on post-modernist who believes everything is subjective, you might have noticed that aesthetics have taken a backseat in our built environment since World War 2. We know that people are willing to spend thousands of dollars to spend a week in historic city centers as tourists, and many are willing to pay significantly more to live in historic housing. (Can you name other industries where a 100-year old product commands a premium to the newest and latest in normal usage?)

With our software-defined robotics, building something intricate, beautiful and custom won’t require more labor and won’t need to be more expensive, and we intend to bring that beauty back to our world.

### Common questions