Construction tech startup Field Materials raises $10.5M to automate materials procurement – News

Construction technology startup Field Materials Inc. has raised $10.5 million in an oversubscribed Series A funding round, bringing its total funding to nearly $19 million.

The company applies artificial intelligence and document digitization to a construction materials and equipment rentals market that relies most on phone calls, emails and manual data entry. Its technology can read vendor quotes, delivery slips and invoices, understand materials, units and quantities and automatically enter the data into nine major construction accounting systems that co-founder and Chief Executive Eldar Sadikov (pictured, left) estimated comprise between 70% and 80% of the U.S. market.

Although the company is just three years old, it has already amassed a customer base spanning 28 states and more than 4,500 construction projects. Sadikov and co-founder Victor Gane (right) are both serial entrepreneurs. Sadikov’s previous venture, a machine learning platform for e-commerce personalization called JetLore Inc., sold to PayPal Inc. in 2018.

Gane earned a Ph.D. in civil and environmental engineering in 2011 and worked on large construction projects in the U.S., Europe and the Middle East. He founded healthcare software firm Remedly Inc. in 2012. Both co-founders met while earning their doctoral degrees at Stanford.

Unlocking paper forms

The construction market has resisted digitization in part because of the lack of applicable tooling, Sadikov said. “Our ability to read and automatically code paper forms like field requisitions is one reason we’re seeing such big demand,” he said. “The fact that guys in the field now have mobile devices means they can take a picture of a document and AI can read those documents reliably.”

Field Materials trained generative AI systems on a corpus of construction documents and taught the large language models to understand the structure and units of measurements used in them.

“The primary area where we add value is cutting the hours of manual work,” Sadikov said. “We cut a lot of the purchase order and accounts payable processing time and improve margins by reducing billing errors and rogue spending, which is orders that shouldn’t have been made.” He estimated the company’s total addressable market at $6 billion in the U.S. and more than double that if commercial property development and management is included.

Sadikov said the Trump administration’s tariff policy present additional opportunities. “The ability to track the pricing of materials, their country of origin and risk profile for each material on the job is extremely important in light of recent events,” he said.

Field Materials plans to use the funding double the size of its workforce and triple revenue this year. Sadikov said the company could be profitable today but is focused on growth.

Navitas Capital GP LLC led funding with participation from Blumberg Capital LLC, Divco West Real Estate Services LLC venture arm, S16VC Europe S.L.U. and Superseed Ventures LLP.

“Divco is a big property owner with close ties to the construction industry,” Sadikov said. “We see our platform not just supporting construction but property tech as well.” He said the company also has its eye on the residential construction market.

Photo: Field Materials