The U.S.-based artificial intelligence startup Build has secured an $8.5 million seed investment for its platform, developed to automate due diligence processes used in infrastructure projects. The funding round was led by Index Ventures, with significant angel investors from OpenAI, Blackstone, and Meta AI Research joining the round alongside Pebblebed, Puzzle Ventures, and Tiny.vc. The company aims to use the new investment to expand its engineering team and scale its AI-powered infrastructure development solutions globally.
Co-founder James Stirrat-Ellis began his career as an architect and worked on the approximately $13 billion Changi Airport Terminal 5 project in Singapore. The lengthy reporting processes, scattered data sources, and slow-moving consulting operations encountered in large-scale infrastructure projects led to the emergence of the startup’s core idea. Stirrat-Ellis, who left his master’s program at Harvard University, shifted his focus to the field of artificial intelligence and founded Build.
AI Reduces Analyses That Used to Take Weeks to Just Hours
In traditional infrastructure projects, site assessments, energy infrastructure analyses, environmental risk assessments, and technical feasibility checks are carried out by different consulting firms over the course of weeks. Build, however, significantly automates this process by simultaneously analyzing more than 1,600 data sources. Analyses generated by AI are presented to clients after being validated by expert teams. The company states that this approach has enabled it to accelerate due diligence processes by over 95%.
One of Build’s standout features is its adoption of a service-oriented (retainer) business model instead of the traditional SaaS licensing model. Rather than selling software licenses to clients, the company operates on a monthly service model and aims to reduce traditional consulting costs through AI-powered automation. As a result, consulting expenses decrease while project development processes gain significant speed.
Growth in Data Center Investments Is Expanding Build’s Market
With the widespread adoption of AI applications, data center investments are experiencing historic growth. Large technology companies—known globally as “hyperscalers”—are expected to invest hundreds of billions of dollars in data centers in the coming years. The accelerating pace of these investments makes it essential to complete processes such as site selection, infrastructure planning, and technical evaluations in a much shorter timeframe. Build is focused precisely on this need and aims to accelerate data center development processes.
The company, which has completed over 100 projects in 15 different countries since its founding, announced that it serves clients managing approximately $2 trillion in assets. Additionally, Build—which recently added its first hyperscaler client to its portfolio—anticipates that artificial intelligence will be used more effectively in the infrastructure development processes of major technology companies.
The Goal: To Make Infrastructure Development Processes Fully Autonomous
The company’s long-term vision is not limited to merely accelerating due diligence processes. Build aims to create a platform capable of managing the entire real estate development cycle—including site selection, permitting processes, engineering planning, pre-construction work, and asset management—using AI agents. This approach, defined as "Agentic real estate", could enable many operational processes in the infrastructure and real estate sectors to be carried out autonomously in the future.
With the support of this new investment, Build plans to expand its engineering team, aiming to both strengthen its technological infrastructure and grow its global customer network. As artificial intelligence takes on a greater role in physical infrastructure projects, the model developed by Build is expected to be one of the pioneers of a significant transformation in the construction, data center, and real estate sectors.
