How a $12M Seed Round Is Powering the AI-Native Construction Company of the Future

Construction is one of the least productive industries in the world — slower, more expensive, and more broken every year.

In this episode, we sit down with Alex, founder of an AI-native construction company that just raised a $12M seed round led by Andreessen Horowitz, to talk about why traditional construction fails  and how AI can finally fix it.

00:00 – $12M seed round & why this company came out of nowhere

01:30 – Alex’s background: from software to heavy industry

03:30 – Why building large projects in the US keeps getting worse

05:00 – How industrial construction actually works (developers, EPCs, GCs)

06:40 – The real problem: incentives, finance, and cost-plus contracts

09:20 – Why change orders are where construction companies make money

11:00 – How AI removes risk instead of just “adding software”

13:30 – Automating design to eliminate ambiguity before construction starts

16:00 – Why doing 10,000 design iterations changes everything

18:30 – Why selling software to GCs doesn’t fix productivity

21:00 – Why this company chose to be the GC, not a tool vendor

23:30 – Lessons from failed vertical construction startups (Katara, prefab)

26:30 – Who their customers are: data centers, mining, manufacturing

29:30 – How fast AI-native construction could actually get

32:30 – Why construction should be treated like a software problem

35:00 – Hiring plans & building a multidisciplinary team

37:30 – The long-term vision: rebuilding the physical world faster

Rho 

Website - https://www.rho.co/

Public

Website - https://public.com/

Alex Modon

https://www.linkedin.com/in/alexmodon/

Nichole wischoff

https://www.linkedin.com/in/nicholewischoff/