OpenSpace’s Jeevan Kalanithi (OpenSpace, iStock, Illustration by Kevin Cifuentes for The Real Deal)
OpenSpace, a construction-tech startup that supplies digital mapping technology to developers and contractors, has raised $102 million in Series D funding.
The fundraise values the San Francisco-based company, founded in 2017, at $902 million, “more than doubling” its valuation from last spring, when it raised $55 million in Series C funding, co-founder and CEO Jeevan Kalanithi said Wednesday.
Construction can be chaotic and therefore difficult to document. OpenSpace’s approach involves using third-party, 360-degree cameras strapped to helmets to take a constant stream of pictures of a project, then stitch them together to tell a story — and create a historical record — of its progress.
AI crunches the data to gauge whether construction is on time, how much progress the various trades have made, and address other time-consuming questions, like how much drywall has been installed in the last two weeks.
Kalanithi says the technology is more reliable, and cheaper, than tasking contractors or others with making these assessments themselves. Cameras document the site passively.
“The main thing that is missing in this industry is a trusted set of facts about what is actually happening,” Kalanithi said. “Written reports and spreadsheets are all just opinions.”
PSP Growth, the venture and growth equity arm of PSP Partners, led the Series D. Alkeon Capital Management, which led OpenSpace’s Series C round, also participated, alongside existing investors GreenPoint Partners, JLL Spark and Menlo Ventures. New investors included Alpaca VC, Fischer Homes and BlackRock-managed funds.
The new funding brings the company’s total equity raised to $190 million.
Using photography to document construction is not a new idea. And other startups like OnsiteIQ and AirWorks use visual data to supply owners and contractors with information about job sites. But Kalanithi says OpenSpace’s cloud-based software, which includes a mobile app, is unique in its comprehensiveness — it’s always “looking” — and its ease of use.
“All we’ve done is make it incredibly easy to have a truly comprehensive record,” he said.
The technology integrates with project management platforms like Procore, PlanGrid and Autodesk, and is designed to be used by everyone on a job site, from the owner-developers themselves to general contractors and the trades. It has been deployed on more than 10,000 sites in 75 countries so far, including “mega projects” like sports stadiums all the way down to small office renovations and quick-serve restaurants, Kalanithi said.
The cost of OpenSpace’s subscription service is calculated as a percentage of the overall value of a development project, irrespective of the total number of users or the amount of data being collected. Customers include JLL, Unispace, Suffolk, Swinerton and Tishman Speyer, among others.
The company has more than 180 employees.
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