Monumental

The construction sector has existed in a labor shortage, with inefficiency, for a long time and is ready for some disruption. Conventional methods have proven incapable of keeping up with global demand for housing and infrastructure with construction projects regularly stretching beyond deadlines, exceeding budgets, and experiencing safety issues. All of these impediments have exacerbated the need for construction automation, precision, and speed.

Monumental are a robotics startup based in the Netherlands and have set themselves on a mission to change the processes of bricklaying and masonry. The company is led by CEO Salar al Khafaji and is addressing construction's productivity gap with a fleet of autonomous robots that work alongside human workers on active job sites. These robots are not trapped in a factory environment - they are created to fit through doors, work on real terrain, and are able to autonomously transport and lay bricks efficiently and precisely. Monumental's core vision is to lift buildings faster, with less waste, and with more design freedom - all while making construction less expensive, safer and ultimately scalable. Monumental's system has a few specialist robots: one robot transports the materials; a second robot places the mortar; and the third robot lays out the brickwork based on an architect design. The firm’s proprietary software coordinates everything, allowing designers full flexibility during construction and complete visibility, too. The technology does not replace human labor, instead it supplements human labor. Human masons are still needed for finishing work and fine detailing, yet the heavy lifting and mundane bricklaying has been automated. The end result is a hybrid workforce that is quicker, smarter, and more resilient. Monumental's robots are already deployed in several construction projects across the Netherlands, helping to build canal walls, housing facades and other brick structures. The company is taking a software-first approach, allowing it to disrupt a hardware-focused industry. Live data that the firm collects means that construction managers can assess their construction productivity and timelines on a digital dashboard, rather than closing project statistics in an application. Monumental is not just a robotics company, they are a full-stack construction optimization platform.

Monumental's momentum really picked up speed in February 2024, when its completed a $25 million Series A funding round, for an overall funding of approximately $32 million. Plural, a European powerhouse led the round, along with Northzone, Hummingbird Ventures, and Foundamental, who have all previously funded transformative tech constructs. The company plans to use the funding to scale, execute research and development and get to market in different geos. Current industry estimates value Monumental at around $120–150 million based on its proprietary robotics IP, early traction within the Dutch construction industry's emerging sector, and forward contracts for future builds. The firm is in the early revenue stage, but it's already generating some income with project contracts from mid-sized contractors. In 2024 alone it is expected to be between $3–4 million revenue and reportedly made its first operational gross profit mostly attributable to decreased manufacturing costs and the economics of its robot as a service (RaaS) model. Although the company has yet to achieve financial net profitability due to continuing overheads in R&D and costs to market insert, which the company will do in step-up stages, it has healthy gross margins and will achieve breakeven by late 2025.

Monumental's growth has been both narrow and strategic, having gone from a small core team to 48 employees, full-time equivalents (FTEs) as of mid-2024, with roles ranging from software engineering to robotics, field operations to business development. The firm commenced its journey with its first deployments only in Amsterdam and Rotterdam, and has successively added launch locations across both extended parts of the Netherlands (Hague, Utrecht, for example). Monumental also has pilot projects, and initial partnerships, now taking place in Germany, and in England, and is thereby initiating the next phase of its pan-European scaling-up strategy! In 2026, it intends to enter Scandinavian markets, including those cities which face similar labor and housing pressures.

While many companies that use industrial robots will sell machines directly to a firm to own or lease, Monumental has a project-based revenue model in place, charging project partners direction per square meter of infrastructure for construction, or per completed project milestone. This business modality will allow for construction firms to use inclusive budgeting (so those costs are more foreseeable), while realizing as much as 50% faster brick-laying, and significant decreases in labour costs. The firm’s working modes also minimize material waste, as construction means less use of materials, and are more safely performed by limiting repetitive strains on working human bodies.

As construction technology enters a progressively competitive environment, Monumental is now competing with established players that include the Australian company Fastbrick Robotics—the creators of the Hadrian X robot, which automates house framing, and the large-scale bricklaying of those frame projects—and of course, in the U.S. only, Construction Robotics (whom is known for their SAM, Semi-Automated Mason systems). While both are powerful, the company is using its modular, mobile robots that are small enough to go through a door in a residence, and agile enough to move around in a real world, "active, cluttered" job site context. Fastbrick's systems, for example, require controlled environments and very large operating "farms"; Monumental's robots can operate in wild, urban construction areas with different brick types, conditions on site, and complexities around. Additionally, Monumental has developed a considerable advantage with their consumable across the software and robotics vertical—to offer a level of project transparency and project adaptability when managing time and costs in real time - which (at scale) few competing robotics companies can match. The firm’s hybrid approach is humanists where humans and robots collaborate, not humans vs robots. This makes adoption super smooth in conservative construction firms who are worried about total automation.

CEO Salar al Khafaji remarked that the overarching aim is to digitize and automate most aspects of masonry work, allowing skilled laborers more time for finer detail oriented work, and allowing ever faster cycles of urban growth.  "Construction is the last major industry that hasn’t been digitized—and we’re here to change that," said al Khafaji. With a strong initial investment, proprietary tech and identified problem to solve, Monumental is primed to become a leader in Europe’s next-gen construction industry. Its robotics and software ecosystem is not just a solution - it is creating an entirely new mode of building. If Monumental continues on its current trajectory, it could be one of the first organizations to genuinely commercialize autonomous masonry at scale. And in doing so, may completely change the way the world builds - one brick at a time.

Click here to access Monumental's website.