Monumental

Even today, it's incredible to me that we've been able to go from that prototype just a couple years back to where we are today. Our robots are deployed and building the walls for houses, canal walls, hotel walls, and electricity stations every day.

It's so fun to read a post like this and see the earliest videos of what we built and have never shared before. They make you half embarrassed and half proud, which is a probably the right balance.

Niall, one of our first hardware engineers, just wrote an amazing post about his journey, on dropping out of his Masters (highly recommended for many talented people!) and joining @BuildMonumental in the first very months of being founded.

The 24h build wasn't the only first in this project: we also built our first soldier courses bringing us closer to not just solving labor shortages, but also improving aesthetics in the built environment.

The Netherlands, like most of the world, is going through a massive energy transition. The amount of solar panels, heat pumps, electric vehicles, and other changes to the energy mix mean that the Dutch will need to build 48.000 (!) of these substations to support the loads on the electrical grid in the next 15 years.

A couple weeks ago, we ran our first 24h non-stop build with our robots at @BuildMonumental (maybe in the world?), running for 36 hours straight to do the brickwork for a transformer substation.

It’s okay, these robot bricklayers aren’t taking ANY humans’ jobs! @ On today’s brand-new TWiST, @Alex chats with @Salar of @BuildMonumental, about the brick-layer shortage that has sparked demand for the startup’s construction-bots. Find out why it’s so difficult to make construction robots play nice together, why Salar thinks it’s so important for startups to tackle large-scale, real-world problems, and why we don’t just need HOUSING but beautiful housing that inspires residents, in this TWiST 500 interview. PLUS we’re chatting with @Seasats CEO Mike Flanigan about the next generation of ocean drones. From their HQ in beautiful San Diego, CA, Mike and his team are getting entirely free of Chinese components, and trying to make products for the US military that are both functional and, dare we say, beautiful? All that PLUS @Jason takes some of your pressing Founder Q’s from around the Web. 🎥 Watch the full episode here 👇

Excited to share that I joined Monumental. We’re building affordable and beautiful housing (and canal walls) through software and robotics. We’re currently building in NL and the UK. If you’re based here, ambitious, and interested in real-world robotics, let me know!

Work really doesn't get more meaningful than this. We're still rapidly growing our team with 15 open roles, including our first UK based (!) one. It's a great time to join: monumental.co/jobs

It's genuinely magical to see hundreds of meters of canal walls, in the oldest parts of town, at Nieuwmarkt and Da Costakade, built by us and knowing that they'll be around for centuries to come.

The fact this works at all is a testament of our incredible computer vision work that automatically compensate for the waves and continuous movement on water. (Internally codenamed "chicken mode".)

Great interview of the mighty @salar by @mariogabriele on automating construction and more beauty in everyday building. (link in next tweet)

The Generalist's @mariogabriele sat down w/ CEO @salar for an unmissable conversation about @BuildMonumental’s mission to shake the construction industry out of its decades-long stagnation to make beautiful buildings faster with robots: generalist.com/p/building-bea…

This week's episode features Salar al Khafaji, CEO and Founder of Monumental! Building Beautiful Homes with Robots: The Future of Construction @salar is the CEO and founder of @BuildMonumental, a company building autonomous robots that assemble buildings, starting with its bricklaying system. After selling his previous software company to Palantir, Salar took time to explore big industries ripe for disruption before landing on construction—a sector that represents a significant portion of GDP yet has seen decades of productivity stagnation. Listen now: • YouTube: youtube.com/watch?v=s0W5jA… • Spotify: open.spotify.com/episode/3m4kKx… • Apple: podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/bui… A big thank you to the incredible sponsors that make the podcast possible: ✨ Enterpret – Transform feedback chaos into actionable customer intelligence: enterpret.com/mario ✨ Brex – The banking solution for startups: brex.com/mario ✨ Persona – Trusted identity verification for any use case: withpersona.com/generalist We explore: → Why construction represents a massive opportunity for technological innovation → How Monumental's system of three robots works together to lay bricks autonomously → Why Europe's severe bricklayer shortage has created wages as high as €80/hour → The post-WWII shift away from beautiful architecture and how to bring it back → Why operating as a subcontractor rather than selling robots makes business sense → The challenges of building a hardware startup in Europe's tech ecosystem → How Palantir's "cult-like" culture influenced Monumental's approach to company building → The balance between structure and productive chaos in scaling a startup → Why the best robotics companies solve specific problems rather than building general-purpose machines → How to foster ambition in Europe's startup ecosystem

“AC this, wash dryer that, US woohoo, EU boohoo” - Why are we eating this brand-warfare from the outside about us up? Europe has the strongest precision manufacturing in the world, we have leading teams in AI, CV, robotics. Europe is a leader in Automation and Frontier Tech! Not a single NVIDIA chip could be produced without European machines. Not a single American cloud, robotics, or deep-tech firm would operate without European manufacturing or suppliers. But we are too humble. Brainwashed to never celebrate Europe. By outsiders and our local politicians. Time for a change. Europe is the birthplace of industrialization. The home of frontier tech. Time, we act like it. Welcome to the real Europe! 🔥🇪🇺

In Amsterdam worden er kademuren gebouwd met robots 😲

Too many times I've heard people say about traditional architecture that it's 'too expensive'. But... is that a fact, or just a myth? In this video, we're taking a deep dive into the question of BUILDING COSTS to figure it out once and for all

So proud of this project, done together with our partners at @DuraVermeer There is something magical in being able to help literally build up our own city, and there is nothing more iconic in Amsterdam than our canals.

We're looking for full-stack software engineers!

Apply here: jobs.ashbyhq.com/monumental/c8a… All open positions: monumental.co/jobs