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Our Series C and The Future of OpenSpace

By Chris Balandran

April 28th, 2021

OpenSpace was created to empower builders. When our founders began talking with construction teams, they quickly saw the frustrations that were faced every day on the job site, and they knew they needed to create a solution. Rather than working on OpenSpace in a silo, they tested ideas and prototypes in the field. The result was a platform that’s become essential for many owners, GCs, and specialty contractors.

That’s why we’re so excited to announce our next round of funding—one that will help us expand our OpenSpace Track analytics suite and continue to innovate our core product.

Taking Remote Work Mainstream in Construction

With the global transition to remote work that we witnessed in 2020, OpenSpace has become an even more valuable resource for builders worldwide. Over the last 14 months, we’ve experienced incredible growth—and it shows no signs of stopping.

Jeevan Kalanithi, CEO and co-founder of OpenSpace wrote on Medium, “The pandemic has been a horrible thing to endure, and it has hit the fast forward button on a lot of us, as we adapt and evolve how we get things done. Tools like Zoom saw massive growth over the past year—and so did OpenSpace. Once you can do something more quickly, more conveniently, more efficiently—you don’t go back.

To date, our customers have used OpenSpace to capture more than four billion square feet of imagery from active construction projects around the world. We’ve also seen our customer count increase by more than 150%, and customer site captures increase by more than 300% over the past year.

Automated photo documentation is becoming standard on construction sites. But our 360˚ reality capture product and AI-powered OpenSpace Track analytics tools are further supporting builders to save money and work more efficiently on their projects. Overall, we exist to make workflows faster and simplify every day that builders are on the job. That’s ultimately how we hope to add value—to make your work easier, more efficient, and less stressful.

Helping Our Customers Forge a New Path for Construction Worldwide

Today we’re officially announcing that we’ve raised a $55 million Series C round of funding. This round includes new and existing investors who believe in our long-term vision and our ability to continue to lead this category. It also comes less than one year after our Series B and brings our total funding to $88 million.

Alkeon Capital Management led the Series C round, and General Partner Mark McLaughlin said: “Alkeon has been investing in leading construction technology companies for more than a decade. Based on our experience and extensive market research, it quickly became clear to us that OpenSpace is not only the leader in the emerging field of automated site capture/analytics, but also one of the most dynamic construction technology companies in the world.”

Other new investors are PSP Partners, GreenPoint Partners, and New World Development. Penny Pritzker, the founder and Chairman of PSP Partners, said, “What stood out to us about OpenSpace is its rapid adoption across industry leaders, including our own construction teams. This level of validation is rare for a young company and a promising indicator of its future potential.”

“This level of validation is rare for a young company and a promising indicator of its future potential.” – Penny Pritzker

Ryan Shmeizer, General Partner at GreenPoint Partners, noted how easy it is to integrate OpenSpace into construction sites, regardless of where builders are across the globe. “One of the reasons we’re excited about OpenSpace is that the image-based platform can be easily used on projects around the world, with minimal barriers to adoption for new regions or languages. The technology resonates with our partner network of leading global real estate owners, who appreciate the ability to virtually view and understand progress at their job sites at any time, from anywhere.”

“The image-based platform can be easily used on projects around the world, with minimal barriers to adoption for new regions or languages.” – Ryan Shmeizer

Existing investors Lux Capital, Menlo Ventures, JLL Spark, Navitas Capital, and Zigg Capital are equally optimistic about OpenSpace’s position in the market and our vision for the future and are participating in this round as well.

OpenSpace Track, A Single Trusted Source of Construction Progress

The Series C funding is an exciting milestone because it affirms our position as a leader in reality capture. We’re also grateful to gain experienced new partners who will support us in our mission of making day-to-day tasks easier and more rewarding for construction teams.

The most important result of this funding is that it gives us the capital to continue building OpenSpace and to pursue the vision we have for the future. Our goal is to create tools that not only capture reality but analyze ground truth automatically so teams can make decisions more easily.

Our new OpenSpace Track analytics suite, including Progress Tracking, is the first step. With automated progress tracking, we make it possible to quickly see how much work has been done at a glance for several different trades. Jeevan Kalanithi, CEO and co-founder of OpenSpace said, “We’ve heard from customers that the ability to create a sharable digital representation of their job sites has been hugely beneficial, but we didn’t want to stop there—we wanted to go deeper and deliver new solutions that save builders time and money.”

“Our new products analyze that data to massively cut down on the administrative work builders have to do, and generate insights that have just been too difficult to derive until now.”

OpenSpace Track and powerful tools like Progress Tracking make it easier for builders to see where crews are falling behind and redirect resources wherever necessary to ensure that deadlines are hit. These tools also make administrative processes like verifying work completed and approving pay applications much simpler.

Real Tech Used By Real People

Customers who already use Progress Tracking on their job sites say that it’s already helped in a number of ways. Blake Pearce, Director of Operations at Provident General Contractors, said, “Having numbers to justify a hunch or gut feeling is so valuable. It allows us to communicate quickly with subcontractors and elevate certain items. If you track the progress of framing, which is in the critical path on 99% of projects, you’ll also generally have a good idea of whether or not you’re on schedule.”

For Brian Garcea, Principal at RG Construction, a specialty contractor in the Chicago area, Progress Tracking provides greater visibility and allows his team to adjust more quickly to conditions on the ground. This is especially crucial on IPD/lean projects where communication between contractors, GCs, and owners is so important.

Brian said, “OpenSpace is the single best tool we’ve had in terms of job site information. Having real-time insight into our progress that lets us quickly adjust how we’re working in the field is what lean is all about. It’s an invaluable tool for our company.”

With all that’s happening here at OpenSpace, we’re incredibly optimistic about 2021 and the future of our industry. We can’t wait to continue pursuing our mission of making work more efficient and rewarding for construction teams. If you haven’t joined us already, please reach out today to learn more.

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