With the recent proposal of the $2 Trillion infrastructure investment from The American Jobs Plan, it is an exciting time to be an operator in the Built Environment.  Along with that excitement, however, is a gnawing recognition that the Built Industry will likely continue to see strains on existing pain points such as deepening labor shortages, increasing supply chain fragmentation, price pressures, & additional complexities adding to existing field to office collaboration challenges.

Many organizations recognize that the only real way to address these systemic challenges is to integrate emerging technologies into their processes.  Perhaps a leading indicator of the AEC industry's mindfulness of the upcoming strain & increase in infrastructure related activity has been the Venture investments seen in Q1 of 2021.  Throughout the past 3 months, the industry saw a total of $775M invested across 31 different deals catalogued by the BuiltWorlds Team.  This 2021 pace of deals represents a sharp increase from what we saw during 2020. As seen in our 2020 Venture Deals List $1.5B was raised across the full year, Q1 2021 investment represents 52% of all investments made during the full prior year.

Flexiv, Infra.Market, & Veev saw the largest investments during the first quarter, all receiving $100M each. Flexiv is a robotics focused company that develops and manufactures adaptive robotics integrating force control, computer vision and AI. Infra.Market is an India based materials marketplace provider that aims to be a "one-stop shop" for all category of construction materials and products. Veev describes itself as a "hybrid real estate solutions company" that integrates intelligence using advanced materials and sensors into the wall of a building during construction.

Others receiving investment in Q1 2021 include Built Technologies, DroneDeploy, BLOX, Mighty Buildings, Guardhat, Avvir, & Ecomedes. Below, is a breakdown of the deals by size, topic area, amount invested per month, amount invested by round, notable investors, as well as a full listing of each deal announced during Q1 2021.