In an era where many startups are struggling to raise funding or are raising funding – but at lower valuations, it’s remarkable when companies grow at stable or higher valuations. Especially when their last raise took place in 2021 – a time when capital was much easier and valuations were rising at crazy rates.
Briq, which has built a platform designed to enable all parts of a construction company to automate financial workflows such as accounts payable and payroll, has raised $8 million in an expansion round at a $150 million valuation. The startup last announced fundraising in June 2021 – a $30 million Series B led funding Tiger Global Management.
The company chose to “wait out the market” and raise a smaller dollar amount with less dilution to a stable valuation rather than go out and try to raise a Series CSAid CEO and co-founder Bassem Hamdy in an interview with TechCrunch.
Tiger Global doubled its investment in Briq contributing to the expansion. MetaProp, whose managing partner Aaron Block is set to join Briq’s board, co-led the round alongside Blackhorn and Eniac. The multi-billion dollar German company Nemetschek also became a backer.
With more than nearly 400 customers, Briz says it saw an increase in ARR (annual recurring revenue) of around 40% in 2023 compared to 2022. The company is also implementing a cost-cutting strategy, which has led to a 45% reduction in staff to 138 by the end of 2023 compared to 2022.
Clients include Briq Choate Construction, Catamount Construction, Fessler and Bowman and Elder Construction, among others.
“Brick is basically sitting down over other solutions to make them work better,” Hamdy said. “It’s like a playbook”
Bots that automate business processes
Founded in 2018 by former Procore executive Hamdy and Wall Street veteran Ron Goldshmidt, Briq claims to have incorporated artificial intelligence (AI) into its offerings before AI became a mainstream term.
Briq has built an offering that uses a group of proprietary technologies, the flagship of which is the use of manufacturing automation robots. The startup says it has a library of more than 200 bots that have been trained “how to perform the actions and tasks that are otherwise performed by humans in these financial workflows that involve the construction space,” according to Hamdy.
Briq uses it in two products: Briq AutoPilot and Briq CoPilot. The Briq AutoPilot product uses bots to automate what Briq claims is up to 80% of those business processes “that are highly deterministic and predictable in nature, such as accounts payable, accounts receivable and payroll processing.”
“These robots have learned how to read documents, apply logic to their content, and take actions based on those rules,” Hamdy said. “Just think of it as the Tesla autopilot for your accounting team. There is definitely a labor problem in construction, so instead of dumping corpses in those departments, you can use our software.”
The other product where Briq uses the technology is in the Briq CoPilot. This product automates the creation and management of financial forecasting processes such as labor cost forecasting, revenue recognition and revenue forecasting. It also introduces end-user guidance and risk detection to help contractors and project managers avoid cost overruns, missed change orders and other financial risks introduced during a job, Hamdy said.
The end result, Briq claims, is that companies are able to reduce overhead and increase their profit margins. To date, Briq says it has automated over a million jobs in the construction industry.
Hamdy sees Briq’s competitors as companies like UiPath and Automation Anywhere.
Expansion into new geographies
MetaProp’s Block believes that what Briq is doing is unique in the construction industry.
“Usually when we think of robots in construction, we think of machines on a construction site. But Briq turned that on its head and introduced into manufacturing the idea that robots can be used in the back office to manage costs, process payroll, run forecasts and perform all sorts of other mundane but extremely important tasks,” he said in a statement. “The manufacturing community is on fire for this. Can they scale an army of digital bots across their business to spot where profit is waning? And is it on call 24 hours a day, 7 days a week? Yes please!“
While Briq is focused on serving the general and specialty contracting market in North America, it has plans to expand into new geographies in the coming years.
“I think what we’re really excited about is not just the English language markets. I actually don’t think these are great construction markets,” Hamdy said. “I’m very interested in the Middle East and Asia and parts of the non-English emerging markets in Europe. That’s where we’re really moving forward dynamically.”
Looking ahead, Hamdy is excited about the prospect using conversational AI to guide financial transactions.
“That’s coming in 2024,” he said.
Want more fintech news in your inbox? Subscribe to TechCrunch Fintech here.
