A New York construction robotics company that prefabricates rebar cages for concrete structures has secured $8m from investors is a Series A funding round.
Tribeca Venture Partners led the financing, joined by Blackhorn Ventures, Point72 Ventures, New York State and Twenty Seven Ventures.
The company, Toggle, was founded in 2016 to use industrial robots and heavy material handling equipment to make pre-tied cages, mats and meshes for columns, beams, shear walls, mats and slabs.
It will use the $8m to scale up production with a new 50,000-sq-ft production facility.
"At a time when global construction is accelerating to an unprecedented pace, Toggle offers a way to add capacity while saving time and cost on some of the largest types of projects," said co-founder and chief executive, Daniel Blank.
The company said it has worked on a number of construction projects in North America including in the energy, commercial and residential sectors, and supplying precast concrete.
"We’re excited to work with Dan and the Toggle team on their mission to bring robotic automation to the construction industry," said Chip Meakem, Managing Partner at Tribeca Venture Partners. "Reinforced concrete is one of the most consumed products globally, with the rebar process at its core. By applying machine learning and robotics to this process, Toggle can massively reduce cost and improve worker safety in this $500bn-a-year market."
Speaking for Blackthorn Ventures, operating partner Ray Levitt praised Toggle for being "capital light, with high gross margins, making it highly resilient to the lumpy and fluctuating demand cycles that characterise construction".
Image: Founded in 2016, Toggle uses industrial robots and heavy material handling equipment to make pre-tied cages, mats and meshes for columns, beams, shear walls, mats and slabs (Toggle)
