Growing up in a pioneering public housing project in Vienna, serial entrepreneur Markus Fuhrmann understood what could constitute good, family housing. And when his Ukrainian wife's home country was brutally invaded by Russia, he knew he was on the right track with his latest endeavor -- a construction startup that prefabricates buildings using robots.
Now Fuhrmann, who previously co-founded online food ordering giant Delivery Hero, plans to help rebuild Ukraine's homes, and as of this week his new startup, Gropyus, had raised a $100 million equity investment round to do it, as well as scale across Germany, initially. The round was led by new investors Semapa and Practical Venture Capital alongside existing investors, taking the company's total raised to $300 million.
"In 2019, my co-founder [Philipp Erler, former CIO of Zalando] and I sat together and said, 'Hey, what would be a bigger problem to solve than delivering pizza and fashion?' I ran into a guy who was in construction, and I thought this is not a very efficient industry."
Instead, Fuhrmann and Erler came up with a way to prefabricate buildings using robots. The challenge was, they'd have to build the robots themselves from the ground up.
Fuhrmann said the startup uses robots in their factory to reduce construction time and labor costs significantly. While the prefabricated, timber-hybrid buildings are being built, the company also embeds wiring and software to manage and track every aspect of the building. This allows for precise cost accounting, carbon footprint analysis, and streamlined building management, Fuhrmann said.
"If you look at the typical construction project, 99% of it is very non-tech, very non-software. And we said, okay, how can we basically digitize this, and how can we then automate it to make it scalable? This is how we then came up with robotics. And to cover the whole life cycle of the buildings, we developed our own hardware and software-based building operating system."
He said tenants get a sustainable and "smart" home that has low operating costs and gets better over time with over-the-air software updates, not unlike many modern EV cars. It can also offer tenants a marketplace for services like internet, insurance, car sharing, car charging, and security.
Fuhrmann said using this prefabricated approach, where robots build the component parts, Gropyus can assemble a nine-story apartment building nearly a third faster than normal construction techniques.
That's where it attracted the interest of Ukrainians.
"My wife is Ukrainian, and she's originally from Mariupol, which was virtually destroyed. We had to try to get all the family members out -- her mother, uncle, aunt, grandmother, grandfather," Fuhrmann said.
He realized he could get involved in the reconstruction of the war-torn country.
"We got more and more involved. We helped to evacuate a total of 13,000 people. Our initiative just recently won a grant from UN Women for helping Ukraine," he said. "And then we said, okay, we already do this construction company, and we can build, very quickly, sustainable housing and affordably. Wouldn't that be something that we can use in Ukraine?"
The company has now teamed up with NGO 'One Ukraine' to build a housing product in the country.
"Currently we are in talks to fundraise for the first pilot project in Ukraine -- to build between 50 and 100 apartments with our building operating system. We will try to get it all funded by private investors rather than the government, which has enough on its mind," Fuhrmann said.
Ricardo Pires, CEO of Semapa, certainly has confidence in the startup. "We believe that Gropyus -- with its innovative, sustainable, and digital concept -- is taking building and living to the next level," he said in a statement.
Gropyus' new funding follows approval from the European Investment Bank (EIB) for a venture debt loan of €40 million. The fresh cash will be used to scale its factory in Richen (Baden-Württemberg), Germany.
Once the factory expansion is completed by the end of 2024, Gropyus said it will be able to manufacture a wall or ceiling element in around 16 minutes - and up to 86% of the process would be automated. The company's full annual production capacity will then total 250,000 square meters of gross floor area, equivalent to more than 3,500 apartments.