Sitegeist, a Munich-based development robotics startup, has raised €4 million in a pre-seed funding spherical. The funding will allow Sitegeist to quickly increase its group, hiring and scale the deployment of its automated, AI-enabled robots on real-world development websites, serving to concrete renovation corporations overcome acute capability constraints.
Automated robots for unstructured, real-world development websites
Throughout Europe, getting old bridges, tunnels, parking constructions, and public buildings urgently require renovation. In Germany alone, the infrastructure restore backlog totals a whole lot of billions of euros (KfW, 2025), with related challenges throughout North America and past.
On the identical time, a extreme labor scarcity is slowing progress: bodily demanding duties equivalent to concrete renovation are pricey, arduous to employees, and tough to scale.
Not like standard automation approaches that depend on pre-existing 3D fashions or standardized website circumstances, Sitegeist’s automated robots function immediately on present constructions.
Utilizing superior notion, AI-based determination help, and adaptive management, they’ll deal with complicated geometries and ranging materials circumstances with out prior digitization, enabling instant deployment on real-world renovation websites.
Dr Lena-Marie Pätzmann, co-founder and CEO of Sitegeist (primary image, second from proper), says: “Infrastructure renovation is hitting a vital bottleneck, particularly in concrete restore. At this time, deteriorated concrete remains to be eliminated utilizing manually-intensive processes which can be arduous to scale.
“We’re tackling this problem with the primary ever specialised automated and modular robots that may carry out concrete renovation immediately on present constructions. We’re thrilled to have received such famend traders who share our mission. This backing allows us to maneuver quicker in bringing automated renovation to vital infrastructure worldwide.”
Scaling concrete renovation capability
Concrete renovation is a very complicated and capacity-constrained phase of infrastructure upkeep. To restore broken constructions, deteriorated concrete have to be selectively eliminated utilizing high-pressure water or abrasive blasting, a course of that requires precision, expertise, and fixed supervision to keep away from damaging the metal reinforcement beneath.
At this time, this work is basically handbook and extremely site-specific. Pushed by shortages of certified labor, low effectivity, and growing security necessities, development corporations are unable to satisfy robust demand and are sometimes absolutely booked months and even years prematurely, resulting in important mission backlogs.
Sitegeist addresses these challenges with modular, automated robots purpose-built for unstructured development environments. This considerably will increase throughput and high quality whereas decreasing rework.
Sitegeist works immediately with concrete renovation development corporations on website, with a modular platform designed to increase throughout the renovation worth chain over time.
Going ahead, the corporate goals to collaborate with further check websites, co-development companions, and expertise to additional validate and refine its robots.
Florian Schweitzer, accomplice at b2venture, says: “The best way concrete is eliminated at this time by staff is devastating and intensely arduous. That is the proper case for augmenting people with robots.
“What units Sitegeist aside is its group, which is able to actually undergo partitions to carry autonomy into extremely unstructured, real-world development environments. The group combines deep robotics experience with a realistic understanding of how renovation truly works on website, which supplies them the potential to outline this class.”
Sam Hields, accomplice at OpenOcean, says: “Essentially the most thrilling AI-powered robots at this time don’t have fingers and thumbs.
“Sitegeist’s non-humanoid robots are purpose-built to unravel real-world issues, and their capability to function in harsh environments with superhuman energy and autonomy is genuinely game-changing.
“That is precisely the sort of job we would like AI to automate: a handbook, costly course of with low expertise availability. With an getting old inhabitants and a abilities scarcity in bodily industries like development, robotics will assist us refit our infrastructure for the long run – and TUM and Munich have confirmed that is the among the finest locations to construct groups to do it.”
Sitegeist is a spin-out from Technical College Munich (TUM) originating from a famend robotics analysis institute led by Prof. Matthias Althoff.
Sitegeist was based by Dr Lena-Marie Pätzmann from the College of St. Gallen in addition to Claus Carste, Julian Hoffmann and Nicola Kolb, who met at TUM throughout their research and thru the Munich Startup ecosystem.
