Construction Startup Competition 2026 announces the 13 finalists selected for its two remaining global stages: eight startups will pitch in Las Vegas and five in Helsinki, following the evaluation conducted by thecompetition’s global partners.
Cemex Ventures, together with BCA Singapore, Caterpillar, Dysruptek by Haskell, Ferrovial, Hilti Venture, Leonard by VINCI Group, NOVA by Saint-Gobain, Trimble and Zacua Ventures, today announced the 13 startups selected to compete at the final two global stages of Construction Startup Competition 2026.
Eight finalists will take the stage in Las Vegas during Trimble Dimensions User Conference, while five will compete in Helsinki at RecoTech during Slush Week. Together, they represent the final cohort of an edition that attracted a record 798 applications from 62 countries and brought emerging technologies from across the global built environment into one of the industry’s most established open innovation platforms.
The announcement brings Construction Startup Competition 2026 into the closing chapter of its 10th edition, following the APAC Pitch Day held in Singapore, where Civils.ai became the first Gold Winner of the year.
European Pitch Day — Meet the 5 FINALISTS
Following the assessment of the applications by the Construction Startup Competition partners, the 13 selected startups will now present their technologies before industry experts, investors and construction leaders across two of the world’smajor innovation ecosystems.
Americas Pitch Day — Meet the 8 Finalists
Universal Matter Inc. (“UMI”) (Canada): transforms carbon waste into sustainable, high-quality graphene dispersions that improve the strength of concrete while significantly reducing its GHG emissions, without increasing costs. Vertical: ClimateTech for the Built World.
Cyphra Autonomy (USA): builds PAL, an autonomous robot platform that moves materials, tools and debris across commercial construction sites, so skilled crews can stay on task. Vertical: Jobsite Productivity & Building Systems.
Teleworker AI (USA): the operating system for physical AI workforces, connecting robots, remote operators, AI agents and digital twins to automate site inspections, progress tracking, safety monitoring and facility operations. Vertical: Jobsite Productivity & Building Systems.
Civils.ai (Singapore): the AI risk platform for civil construction, estimating quantities from drawings with 90% less effort and using contract documents to manage risk, scope changes and claims. Vertical: Preconstruction Technologies.
Kestrel Labs (USA): transforms building regulations into structured, machine-readable intelligence that continuously checks BIM and CAD models, reducing project risk during design and before permitting review. Vertical: Preconstruction Technologies.
Boon AI (USA): an AI estimating platform for general contractors and subcontractors that turns 2D PDF blueprints into structured, bid-ready takeoffs in minutes, cutting estimating time by 90%. Vertical: Preconstruction Technologies.
Spartan Industries (USA): builds OpenCROS, the open operating system that coordinates heterogeneous construction robot fleets from a single control room, with a live digital twin that catches errors before they happen. Vertical: Smart Buildings & Infrastructure.
Tag-N-Trac (USA): a full-stack IoT and AI-driven platform that brings real-time, end-to-end visibility and automation to global supply chains and logistics. Vertical: Smart Manufacturing & Logistics.
European Pitch Day — Meet the 5 Finalists
Bton Holding GmbH (Germany): develops Hybrid Suspension Mixing, a two-stage processing technology for industrial concrete production that enables lower-cost, low-carbon structural concrete with lower cement demand. Vertical: ClimateTech for the Built World.
Builder Assist (France): develops Surface Assist, the first multi-task robotic arm mounted on standard aerial lifts, automating strenuous tasks such as drilling, grinding, sanding and rendering on large surfaces. Vertical: Jobsite Productivity & Building Systems.
Bimefy (Belgium): an AI-driven construction intelligence platform that links site reality to 4D BIM, connecting planning, 360° captures, drone data and live cameras to track progress and detect deviations early. Vertical: Jobsite Productivity & Building Systems.
Sensible 4 (Finland): builds retrofit autonomy and site fleet management for heavy construction fleets, combining V2X, terrain-aware perception and physics-first simulation to automate real worksite operations. Vertical: Jobsite Productivity & Building Systems.
Robotiz3d Technology Ltd (United Kingdom): captures millimetre-accurate 3D road-condition data at traffic speed and uses AI to classify every crack and pothole, turning reactive road repair into predictive maintenance. Vertical: Smart Buildings & Infrastructure.
The Americas Pitch Day stage will take place as part of Trimble Dimensions User Conference & Offsite Expo 2026, held in Las Vegas from November 9–11. Helsinki will follow on November 17 at RecoTech, one of the Nordic region’s key meeting points for PropTech and ConTech and part of Helsinki’s wider Slush Week innovation ecosystem.
A snapshot of where construction innovation is heading
Beyond setting a new participation record, the 2026 application pool provides a snapshot of where entrepreneurs see some of the construction industry’s most immediate opportunities for transformation.
The competition received 798 applications from 62 countries, 40.3% more than in 2025. Europe and North America accounted for 64% of applications, while APAC represented 23%, Latin America 7%, the Middle East 5% and Africa 1%.
The technologies submitted also reveal where founders are concentrating their efforts. Jobsite Productivity & Building Systems was the largest category, accounting for 32.5% of applications, followed by ClimateTech for the Built World at 22.8% and Preconstruction Technologies at 21.7%. Smart Buildings & Infrastructure represented 13%, while Smart Manufacturing & Logistics accounted for 9.9%.
Taken together, the figures point to an ecosystem increasingly focused on technologies capable of improving productivity, digitizing workflows, reducing environmental impact and connecting physical construction processes with data, automation and intelligent systems.
From this global pool, the Construction Startup Competition partners have now narrowed the field to the startups that will represent the final two stages of the 2026 edition.
Civils.ai enters the CSC 2026 Hall of Fame after taking APAC Gold in Singapore
The first name in the Construction Startup Competition 2026 Hall of Fame has already been decided.
Civils.ai was named APAC Gold Winner following the first Pitch Day of the 2026 edition, held in Singapore during International Built Environment Week (IBEW).
The startup competed alongside Arbel.ai, Bton.io, ConcreteAI and LIGHTYX, securing the Gold distinction with its AI-powered platform designed to automate repetitive and error-prone preconstruction tasks. Its technology combines AI-drivenquantity takeoffs with the intelligent review and cross-checking of construction drawings, specifications and project documentation.
Singapore marked the beginning of the Competition’s global final phase and established Civils.ai as the first Gold Winner of the 2026 edition.
Now, attention turns west.
Las Vegas and Helsinki will decide the next names in the CSC 2026 story
The final stages of Construction Startup Competition 2026 will bring the competition into two very different but complementary innovation environments.
In Las Vegas, eight startups will present their solutions during Trimble Dimensions, connecting the finalists with construction and technology professionals from across the global Trimble ecosystem. The stage will determine the Competition’sGold, Silver and Bronze medals.
For the fourth consecutive year, the Construction Startup Competition returns to The Venetian in Las Vegas, reinforcing a stage that has become a key meeting point for some of the most promising emerging companies in ConTech.
Last year’s Gold Winner, Gravis Robotics, offers a compelling example of what can follow. The Swiss startup took the top prize at the 2025 Las Vegas Pitch Day with its robotic intelligence technology for automating heavy constructionmachinery. Less than a year later, in August 2026, Gravis Robotics announced a $200 million Series A investment from SoftBank to accelerate the global deployment of its autonomous heavy-equipment technology.
Its trajectory from the Las Vegas stage to one of the construction robotics sector’s most significant recent funding rounds illustrates the ambition behind Construction Startup Competition: identifying emerging technologies and connecting theirfounders with an international ecosystem capable of supporting their next stage of growth.
One week later, Helsinki will bring five finalists to RecoTech on November 17. Held during Slush Week, the event connects startups with investors, corporations and decision-makers from the Nordic and international built environmentecosystem and will crown the European Gold Winner of Construction Startup Competition 2026.
Together with the Singapore stage, Las Vegas and Helsinki complete a global journey designed not only to identify promising technologies, but to connect founders with the corporations, investors and strategic partners capable of helping thosetechnologies move from innovation to adoption and international scale.
After 798 applications, 62 countries and three global stages, Construction Startup Competition 2026 is approaching the moment when its next generation of construction innovators will be fully revealed.
Singapore has already crowned its Gold Winner. Las Vegas and Helsinki are next.
