This startup’s self-driving excavators assist dig up $600M in new funding

Bedrock Robotics has raised $600 million in a funding spherical that values the autonomous automobile know-how startup at $4.1 billion, marking a speedy ascent for the two-year-old firm.

The Series C spherical, co-led by CapitalG and Emergence Capital, comes two months after the startup reached a key milestone: shifting its autonomous excavators past testing and pilot packages and placing them to work on energetic development websites.

Bedrock Robotics has developed a self-driving equipment that may be retrofitted onto development and different worksite automobiles. Excavators outfitted with Bedrock’s autonomous-driving tech are actually commercially working at a Nevada-based water therapy facility, an earthwork website run by Champion Site Prep in Texas_, and a 1.2 million-cubic-yard civil sitework undertaking with Zachry Construction Corporation.

Bedrock has raised almost $1 billion because it was founded in 2024 by a bunch of autonomous automobile and robotics business veterans. Co-founder and CEO Boris Sofman beforehand led Waymo’s now-shuttered self-driving vehicles program. Sofman additionally co-founded and led Anki Robotics, the maker of the favored Cozmo shopper robotic, which shut down in 2019.

Other co-founders embody Waymo veterans Kevin Peterson, Bedrock’s chief know-how officer, and Ajay Gummalla, who serves as Bedrock’s vice chairman of engineering and utilities. Tom Eliaz, who beforehand labored at Segment and Twilio, can also be a co-founder and VP of engineering and {hardware}.

The contemporary capital will assist Bedrock speed up its transition to business work. The firm plans to deploy its know-how at extra development websites, whereas increasing the groups and utilities wanted to help prospects within the discipline.

“We have confirmed that absolutely autonomous excavators can carry out actual work of worth alongside the crews and workflows already in place on job websites. The subsequent problem is delivering that functionality to extra contractors as a reliable a part of how tasks get constructed,” Sofman mentioned in a press release.

Bedrock is especially targeted on autonomous excavators, partially due to a rising scarcity of expert operators. It takes 5 years or extra to grasp working an excavator, in keeping with Bedrock. Meanwhile, a rising variety of development staff are approaching retirement age. The Associated Builders and Contractors, a nationwide development business commerce affiliation, estimates that greater than 40% of development staff will retire within the subsequent 5 years.

Bedrock is betting that the business will more and more flip to autonomous driving tech to assist shut that labor hole.

The startup’s latest accomplice is Haydon, an Arizona-based basic contractor that plans to make use of Bedrock-equipped machines throughout a variety of tasks, together with superior manufacturing services, water and wastewater, knowledge facilities, and healthcare services.

New traders US Innovative Technology Fund (USIT), Bessemer Venture Partners, and Temasek participated within the spherical, alongside present traders 8VC, Georgian, Valor Equity Partners, Xora, Eclipse, Perry Creek Capital, and Nvidia.

The startup additionally introduced two government hires because it scales business operations. Amy Jones Satrom, a veteran of Amazon, Nuro, and Uber, has joined Bedroc as its vice chairman of operations. Lando Juarez, previously head of authorized for Uber’s autonomous mobility and supply trade, was employed as basic counsel.