UK startup develops world’s first AR goggles to help builders speed up construction, also gets funded

XYZ Reality, a UK startup that aims to transform the construction industry, has recently announced the closing of a £5 million (€5.7 million) Series A round, led by Amadeus Capital Partners and Hoxton Ventures, with participation from Adara Ventures and J Coffey Construction.

The company has developed world’s first Engineering Grade Augmented Reality (AR) goggles, HoloSite, that allows construction workers to view Building Information Models on-site to 5-millimetre accuracy and complete construction faster.

Named as one of the top five Construction Technology Firm by Techworld and the winner of Innovate UK 2018 & 2019 grants, XYZ Reality aims to revolutionise the construction industry with holograms.

In the construction industry, buildings are first designed in 3D and then converted into 2D drawings. This transformation creates significant inefficiencies with up to 80% of construction works being “out-of-tolerance”. This results in 7-11% of project costs being wasted and in mega-projects, this amounts to an average of £70 million.

XYZ Reality’s HoloSite wants to solve this by improving the feedback loop between site and design by 92% as construction workers are now able to make real-time informed decisions in the field.

Founder, CEO and builder David Mitchell commented:

2D is an unnatural language for humans; we see everything in 3D, yet tradespeople are being asked to interpret 2D drawings, conceptualise the 3D asset and then build the asset on-site to within construction tolerances. Works are currently validated after the fact through laser scanning. 80% of the time the construction fails to meet acceptable tolerances. With HoloSite, we can prevent errors happening in the first place.

Mitchell, who took his first steps on a building site, has spent his career in the industry, with experience spanning digital construction and architecture. It was when the recession hit in 2008 that Mitchell started looking for a way to transform the industry. In 2016, he had his ‘Eureka moment’ – eliminate 2D in its entirety.

The new funding will enable the company to further improve the user experience by doubling the size of the technology team, expand its development team across all verticals and build its sales and marketing operation.

Nick Kingsbury, Partner, Amadeus Capital Partners said:

Construction is a sector that’s ripe for radical innovation. This technology has the potential to revolutionise how the construction industry sets out and validates its work, reducing costs and the chance of project slippage from mistakes. This funding from Amadeus and Hoxton Ventures will enable XYZ Reality to develop its AR cloud and software platform, build its team to serve the EU market and expand to US and Asia, where it has received significant interest.

Main image picture credits: XYZ Reality

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