Build, a British and U.S.-based AI-native infrastructure company helping governments, developers and investors accelerate critical projects, has raised €7.4. million ($8.5 million) in Seed funding to expand its engineering and infrastructure teams, accelerate R&D and deepen its presence across North America and Europe.
The round was led by Index Ventures. Pebblebed, Puzzle Ventures and Tiny.vc also participated alongside a range of angels, including OpenAI chief financial officer Sarah Friar and Blackstone chief technology officer John Stecher.
James Stirrat-Ellis, co-founder and CEO of Build, says: “The industries shaping the physical world have spent decades trapped in process instead of creativity. By removing that operational burden, we can help teams move faster, make better decisions and deliver better infrastructure. That’s the long-term opportunity and we’re only at the beginning of it.”
Build’s Seed round sits within a wider 2026 funding environment in which EU-Startups has seen investment into AI-enabled tools for real estate, construction, infrastructure inspection and industrial engineering workflows.
Comparable rounds include London-based Scope’s €17.2 million raise, also led by Index Ventures, to speed up industrial inspection workflows; London-based Orbital’s €50 million Series B for AI-powered real estate law; London-based Qflow’s €2.3 million strategic investment for construction data integration; Paris-based Davis’ €4.6 million pre-Seed for automated architectural generation; Paris-based GoCanopy’s €2.1 million Seed for institutional real estate investors; Zurich-based ScyAI’s €2 million pre-Seed for real estate risk intelligence; Germany’s conmeet’s €1.3 million pre-Seed for construction and trade workflows; and Berlin-based SPREAD AI’s €25 million Series B for industrial engineering intelligence.
These 2026 rounds amount to approximately €104.5 million in adjacent built-environment, real estate, construction and industrial AI software funding, rising to about €111.9 million when Build’s €7.4 million round is included.
UK-based companies appear prominently in this sample, with Scope, Orbital and Qflow all operating from London.
Martin Mignot, partner at Index Ventures, adds: “Build represents a new generation of AI companies focused on delivering actual work rather than simply improving software workflows. James and Ben have combined deep technical capability with real operational understanding of how critical infrastructure gets built. The infrastructure challenge is global and what the team has achieved before launch is extraordinary.”
Founded in 2024 by architect James Stirrat-Ellis, who previously worked on projects including the Changi Airport T5 in Singapore, and AI researcher Ben McClusky, Build was created to tackle key constraints on infrastructure development: slow, fragmented workflows that can delay critical projects by weeks or months.
Demand for AI infrastructure, power and industrial capacity is outpacing supply, placing growing pressure on governments and developers worldwide. At the same time, the company says many consulting and engineering businesses lack the margins needed to invest heavily in AI-driven transformation.
Its AI systems automate complex infrastructure workflows, including site sourcing, technical due diligence, power assessment and early design, reportedly helping customers reduce project timelines by more than 95%.
The platform analyses information from more than 1,600 data sources and has already been deployed across more than 100 projects in 15 countries for governments, Fortune 500 companies and institutional real estate groups, including Tishman Speyer.
It evaluates planning, environmental, power and political constraints in parallel rather than sequence, helping customers identify risks earlier and focus resources on the highest-potential opportunities.
It’s able to do this by combining AI talent with domain experts drawn from firms including Blackstone, Tishman Speyer, Starwood Capital and JP Morgan, alongside specialists with decades of experience in data centre development and infrastructure delivery.
Ophelia Cai, partner at Tiny.vc, says: “What stood out immediately about Build was the ambition of the vision and the speed of execution. James and Ben understood early that AI was about to move beyond software and begin transforming how real-world work gets done. Infrastructure remains one of the largest untapped opportunities for AI and Build is creating a completely new model for how critical projects are delivered.”
The company’s long-term goal is to automate the development lifecycle, from site selection and due diligence through permitting, engineering, pre-construction and asset management, creating what it calls “agentic real estate“.
