Construct Capital
Canvas Category Consultancy : Company : Venture Capital
Construct Capital is an early stage venture capital firm founded in 2020. We invest in extraordinary founders building technology to transform the most foundational industries of our economy — from manufacturing and supply chain to food and transportation — that drive half our economy’s GDP yet are failing to meet customer expectations. We are active investors seeking to invest at the Seed or Series A stage.
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Advex AI Raises $3.5M Seed Round, Launches Revolutionary GenAI Synthetic Data Platform for AI Vision in Manufacturing
Advex AI, a bleeding-edge startup tackling the critical data problem in AI Vision for manufacturing, announced their $3.5 million seed funding round led by Construct Capital, with participation from Pear VC, Emerson Collective, and notable angel investors Arash Ferdowsi (Dropbox founding CTO) and Ankit Jain (Infinitus CEO). The company also revealed its selection as a top 20 Finalist at this year’s TechCrunch Disrupt Startup Battlefield.
Advex’s platform represents a radical shift in how enterprises develop production-grade AI Vision models. Instead of undergoing months of expensive data collection cycles, AI and automation teams can reduce the time to hours by leveraging Advex’s GenAI platform to automatically figure out what data is missing, then synthetically creating that missing data using advanced diffusion models.
Seven of the world’s largest manufacturers already use Advex’s Vision technology, with over 25 additional billion-dollar companies currently adopting Advex’s breakthrough capabilities. Customers routinely benefit from a 50%+ improvement in visual automation performance in just a few days - a feat which would normally take many months, if not years, to achieve.
How Advex creates synthetic data to improve machine vision for manufacturers
Advex’s formal launch at TechCrunch Disrupt 2024 has already secured a handful of customers through its stealth phase. This includes what it calls “seven major” enterprise clients, which it says it’s not at liberty to disclose. TechCrunch can also reveal that the San Francisco-based startup has raised $3.6 million in funding, the bulk of which came via a $3.1 million seed tranche last December, with notable backers including Construct Capital, Pear VC, and Laurene Powell Jobs’ Emerson Collective.
Potential customers include legacy developers of machine vision systems, along the lines of Cognex or Keyence, which are striving to bolster their products with better AI. But on the other side, Advex might sell directly to the end-user businesses, such as car manufacturers or logistics companies building their own in-house tooling. But the real secret sauce is in the company’s proprietary diffusion model, similar to something like Midjourney or Dall-E, and is what’s used to create the synthetic data. “That one is custom, and is highly complicated — that’s where we put all of our effort,” Pachuca added.
Monaire raises $3.5M to help small commercial buildings transition to sustainable heating and cooling using AI
Monaire, a startup that uses AI to curb waste and emissions from small commercial buildings, announced $3.5 million in seed funding. Construct Capital led the round with participation from Workshop Ventures, as well as strategic individual investments from Steve Fredette, the president and co-founder of Toast, and Tom Kuo, co-founder of A-Street and chairman of the board at Mighty Earth.
Monaire’s predictive maintenance and energy management platform automatically detects, diagnoses, and services HVAC and refrigeration (HVAC/R) systems in small commercial buildings. Using a network of wireless sensors, Monaire’s AI-enabled software continually monitors performance in a building’s HVAC/R systems, automatically preventing energy waste, and detecting problems. When issues are detected, Monaire immediately diagnoses the problem and automatically dispatches an available technician to make repairs.
This Harvard dropout and her brother launched a company to conserve liquids in factories
That’s because Lu, and her older brother David, 25, have since launched and are now growing their own company, H2Ok Innovations, which uses a combination of hardware and software to improve the efficiency of factories by reducing how much liquid they use.
Since officially launching their sibling enterprise in March 2021, H20k Innovations has raised $6.8 million from investors including Construct Capital, Flybridge Capital, Techstars, 1517 Fund and 2048 Ventures. The company is headquartered out of Greentown Labs in Boston, and is booking revenue. Annie and David were recognized as 2022 Forbes 30 Under 30 and in March, H20k Innovations was recognized at Unilever’s annual supplier summit and granted the “Start-up of the Year Award.”