Bedrock raises $600m to expand autonomous excavation

Bedrock Robotics announced a $600 million Series C on 26 October at a $4.1 billion post-money valuation. CapitalG and Emergence Capital co-led the round, which will fund U.S. deployments of autonomous construction equipment and the field operations supporting them.[1]

Bedrock says its excavators began paid, fully autonomous work on commercial sites in August. Expansion plans include further tests with contractor Haydon covering trench work and larger machines.[1]

Bessemer Venture Partners, an investor in the round, reports seeing two CAT 352 excavators working without cab operators during an Austin visit. Its account describes an excavator loading a human-driven dump truck and an Operator model trained on human operators’ work. The firm says Bedrock’s reversible retrofit kit can be fitted within a couple of hours without permanent modifications, accommodating contractors’ mixed fleets.[2]

The work around each deployment

Bedrock’s recruitment material gives a more detailed view of the organisation it is building. Its first dedicated safety programme-manager role calls for a validation plan spanning simulation and site testing. The brief also requires safety requirements to be traceable across platforms and sites, and field reports to become prioritised engineering work.[3]

Turning field reports into engineering changes becomes especially consequential as new tasks and machine types enter the fleet. The company is recruiting for checks that follow those changes before they reach customers.[3]

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