Brick-Laying Robot Company Monumental Raises $32 Million and Sets Its Sights on the U.S.

Key points

• Monumental, an Amsterdam-based construction robotics company, raised $32 million in Series B funding in 2025.
• The company's robots have built walls for more than 100 homes, plus a school, a hotel, and a community centre, across the Netherlands and the U.K.
• Khosla Ventures led the funding round, with Hummingbird and Plural also participating.
• The U.S. is short between 200,000 and 400,000 construction workers in any given month, according to Monumental.
• Monumental plans to launch in the U.S. later in 2025 and expand the tasks its robots can perform beyond bricklaying.

There is a simple, stubborn problem facing construction right now: not enough hands to do the work. Monumental, a Dutch startup, thinks robots can help fill that gap.

The company builds and operates electric, autonomous machines that lay bricks on active construction sites. They read digital building plans, pick up bricks, apply mortar, and place each one with millimetre precision. A software platform called Atrium, which acts as the brain coordinating all the robots' movements and decisions, runs the whole operation. Human operators from Monumental stay on site to load materials, handle maintenance, and step in whenever something unexpected happens.

This week, as first reported by The Robot Report, Monumental announced it had raised $32 million in a Series B round, the second major funding milestone after an earlier research-and-development phase. Khosla Ventures led the investment.

Why does this matter for people who need homes?

The shortage is real. Home builders in the U.S. will need to add 2.2 million workers over the next three years just to meet current demand, and each month the industry runs roughly 200,000 to 400,000 workers short. That gap slows construction and pushes up the cost of housing.

Monumental's pitch is that its robots take on the repetitive, physically grinding parts of bricklaying, freeing skilled tradespeople for work that genuinely requires human judgement. The company does not sell robots to contractors. Instead, it acts as a subcontractor: builders pay for finished walls, not for machines. That model means a contractor carries none of the cost or risk of owning specialised equipment.

CEO Salar al Khafaji is direct about the goal. "Our goal isn't to replace people, but to give the industry the additional capacity it desperately needs," he told The Robot Report.

The proof of concept is already standing. Monumental's robots have built walls for more than 100 homes across Europe, alongside a school, a community centre, a hotel, and canal walls. The Series B was raised on the back of those results, not projections.

Expanding into the U.S. brings its own complications. Building codes, labour rules, and construction practices differ state by state. Al Khafaji says adapting to varied markets is something Monumental already does across Europe, and that its software-first approach makes local customisation practical.

Beyond bricklaying, the company plans to use the new funding to expand what its robots can do and to grow its engineering team. What those additional tasks will be has not yet been confirmed.