Showing once again that there is a lot of investor interest in mobile-oriented construction collaboration platforms, Paris-based Finalcad has announced that is has secured €20m (US$22.4m or £17.25m) Series B funding to help finance its international development ambitions.
FinalCad was established in France in 2011 and started to grew domestically following adoption by several major clients, including contractors Vinci and Bouygues, before beginning to spread its net overseas after getting a €2.1m (c. £1.5m) investment from Serena Capital in June 2014 (read my July 2015 post). I met up with two of the Finalcad team again in March 2016, when I was briefed about their defects reporting data, and about the platform’s growing building information modelling (BIM) related capabilities.
This latest funding round was led by existing investor Serena Capital, alongside Caphorn Invest and Aster Capital. Finalcad says the investment will fuel international business growth, expansion into new sectors and advanced research and development (including smart data analytics, artificial intelligence for object recognition, augmented reality linked to BIM models, digitisation of lean construction processes, and open API interoperability).
Jimmy Louchart, co-founder and CEO (right), says: “With this new round of funding, Finalcad is poised to scale for … growing demand happening within a growing global market.”
Finalcad has been used to deliver more than 10,000 projects in 30 countries, with over 20 million jobsite observations and nearly 10 million photos. The platform is used by global contractors such as Bouygues, Daewoo Engineering & Construction, Eiffage, Fujita Corporation, Shimizu Corporation, Takenaka Corporation and VINCI, infrastructure operators like RATP Group, architects, and owners such as Capitaland and Swire Properties.
Finalcad is benefitting from positive international investment sentiment previously displayed with US funding rounds for FieldLens (US$8m in May 2014) and Plangrid (which raised US$18m in June 2015), alongside more modest investments in businesses such as Canada’s Bridgit (US$1.7m in April 2016) and Denmark’s GenieBelt (which announced a €2m investment earlier this month). At a different scale and stage, investors were also very supportive of the Au$120m share placement that funded Aconex’s Conject acquisition in March 2016.
