At Plural, we think about “Terms of Excitement”. A few aspects of Monumental made it impossible for me to miss this opportunity:

Physical AI: We’re in a super interesting moment where the rapid rise of powerful machine learning models shifts a lot of the complexity of next-gen robotics companies from hardware to software. Instead of rigid multi-hundred-thousand-euro machines that must be programmed specifically to do one thing, line-by-line, we get near-consumer-low-cost hardware + most of the logic in advanced software, with all the ingenuity and scalability that comes with software innovation.

Replacing jobs left undone, not human workers: If the Netherlands needs 100,000 new homes per year, and there are human bricklayers to deliver 70,000, automating the missing 30,000 jobs to deliver is an obvious win-win for all.

Construction is vast: A recent study estimated that construction robots could increase productivity by 50-60%. The global construction market is headed towards $15.5 TRILLION by 2030, and that requires advanced tech.

The trick that Monumental has cracked here is to not sell tech to the construction industry but reinvent the industry in human+machine symbiosis. Hiring Monumental to build your walls does look and feel like what is typical upstream in the construction business and supply chain.