Buildstock, a B2B marketplace and Fintech platform for construction materials, this week secured $1.6M in pre-seed funding from Precursor, MGV, XFactor, RefashionD and angels, including Osuke Honda (DCM), Nihal Mehta (Eniac), Shruti Gandhi (Array Ventures), Tom Peterson (Rally Ventures), Yun-Fang Juan, and Mark G (m]x[v Capital). The platform empowers builders and suppliers by streamlining sales and procurement, driving savings of money and time. This funding enables Buildstock to scale, expand third-party fintech, AI and logistics integrations and bring more participants into the marketplace.
Late payments cost the $1.4 trillion construction materials industry over $208B in 2022, up 53% from 2021. Buildstock said its marketplace and fintech solutions solve this by creating unprecedented procurement efficiency. With Buildstock, builders access AI-driven product discovery and cost savings as high as 40% on materials and five times faster lead times. They get transparency into lead times and tracking information to plan around deliveries of supplies. A feature takes blueprint files and uses AI to generate a list of needed supplies, further streamlining the procurement process.
“Buildstock is spearheading a digital revolution in the construction sector, breaking through the old, fragmented, and relationship-dependent procurement models with a modern, user-friendly digital marketplace and flexible financing options,” said Jim Barrett, chief innovation officer at Turner Construction. “The construction industry stands at the cusp of a significant transformation, with the supply chain procurement process ripe for disruption. We need innovative solutions like Buildstock to streamline material sourcing, offer cost efficiencies, and also inject unprecedented transparency into project management through real-time life-cycle tracking of materials procurement from order to delivery.”
For suppliers, Buildstock offers fast, predictable payments, instead of the standard 90 to 120 days. The company uses factoring and pays suppliers within 5 days of delivery. This is part of their cash flow work in the industry, which improves their suppliers’ unit economics, manufacturing capacities, overhead and insurance.
“The construction industry is ripe for innovation and is one of the last industries to adopt technology. As a builder of $1B+ high-rise projects, I know what matters: time and money. Buildstock isn’t another complex software pitch; it’s a promise,” said Kathryn Thiele AIA, Founder and CEO of Buildstock. “Buildstock is about completing projects faster, more cost-effectively, with unprecedented transparency. This is how technology reshapes the industry.”
“Digital disruption has been the story of our generation and construction is one of the last holdouts for this type of innovation. There are enormous efficiencies to be unlocked in the massive construction industry, and Buildstock is at the forefront of bringing these to life,” said Charles Hudson, founder and managing partner at Precursor Ventures. “We’re extremely proud of (their) team for the value they’ve been able to bring to market.”
For builders, the platform offers a way to find local and national suppliers that can help them save big on materials, streamline procurement, manage orders, and save time to complete projects faster. On the supplier side, Buildstock offers increased product visibility and order flow, better payment terms and inventory management.