TerraFirma raises $115M to build robotic infrastructure for construction

TerraFirma’s semi-autonomous excavator at work. | Source: TerraFirma

TerraFirma this week raised $115 million in Series A funding. The startup said the investment will enable it to expand its engineering, manufacturing, operations, and construction teams, as well as to continue developing its semi-autonomous heavy equipment.

“Construction is the foundation everything else is built on, and it’s been going backward for 50 years,” said Noah Schochet, co-founder and CEO of TerraFirma. “America built the transcontinental railroad, the interstate highway system, and the Hoover Dam. There’s no reason we can’t build at that scale again, and there’s no first-principles reason construction can’t become 10x faster, cheaper, and safer. TerraFirma exists to help America build again and then take that capacity into the cosmos.”

Kleiner Perkins led the round. It also included participation from Bain Capital Ventures, Glade Brook Capital Partners, BANNER VC, Saga Ventures, Trust Ventures, Definition, PEAK6, Magnetar Capital, and Ravelin Capital. Angel investors include founders, executives, and engineers from companies including SpaceX, Anduril, Base Power, Shinkei, and Hadrian.

Former SpaceX engineers Schochet and Noah McGuinness founded TerraFirma in 2024. It is a tech-enabled, vertically integrated construction company initially focused on robotic earthworks and site operations. The Austin, Texas-based company builds and uses its own robotics and software in the field.

Construction industry needs to get the most from labor

Physical infrastructure, from roads to power grids to homes, factories, and hospitals, is the foundation of civilization. Yet construction is one of the only major industries where productivity has gone backward, asserted TerraFirm.

Since 1965, labor productivity in U.S. construction has fallen at an average rate of 0.6% per year, according to the U.S. Department of Commerce and Goldman Sachs. At the same time, productivity across the broader economy has grown at roughly 1.6% annually. This productivity collapse has cost the equivalent of roughly $1 trillion every five years.

TerraFirma said it is building the robotic infrastructure stack for modern construction. Its full-stack platform combines AI-enabled pre-construction software, a remote command-and-control center, and retrofitted semi-autonomous heavy machinery. This machinery includes excavators, dozers, loaders, rollers, skid steers, and more.

All of this is converted into robots that no longer require an operator in the cab. Instead, skilled operators orchestrate entire fleets from screens, using the same intuition and judgment they’ve built over years, now extended across multiple machines at once.

The result is a system that can make each operator up to 300% more effective, accelerating project execution, reducing costs, and creating jobs that are safer and higher-paying than traditional equipment operation.

“It is not about trying to fully automate construction equipment,” said Noah McGuinness, chief technology officer of TerraFirma. “Making construction truly faster and cheaper requires innovating on operations and technology together across the full stack. We believe autonomy is a part of the solution, but driving real change requires building a whole ecosystem of technology that is directly informed by rapid iteration and lessons from the field.”

What’s next for TerraFirma?

TerraFirma is currently working on projects across the housing, energy, transportation, manufacturing, and education sectors. Recent commercial projects in Texas include site preparation, excavation, and grading for a new Starbucks in North Austin, a sports arena in Spicewood, and a power substation in New Braunfels supporting power delivery to homes.

TerraFirma is also working with the U.S. government to execute mission-critical international infrastructure and logistics projects in some of the world’s most challenging operating environments.

“TerraFirma is succeeding at real-world scale, proving the business model works, and securing government and commercial contracts. This is clearly where the industry is headed,” said Josh Coyne, a partner at Kleiner Perkins.

In the long term, TerraFirma said it hopes to bring its construction technology beyond Earth to help create space-based infrastructure.

“The technology that we are building today to solve critical challenges here on Earth will be highly reusable to solve those same challenges on the Moon and Mars,” said Schochet.

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