Inside the funding round driving the shift to intelligent construction fleets
Updated
February 7, 2026 2:12 PM
Aerial shot of an excavator. PHOTO: UNSPLASH
Bedrock Robotics has raised US$270 million in Series B funding as it works to integrate greater automation into the construction industry. The round, co-led by CapitalG and the Valor Atreides AI Fund, values the San Francisco-based company at US$1.75 billion, bringing its total funding to more than US$350 million.
The size of the investment reflects growing interest in technologies that can change how large infrastructure and industrial projects are built. Bedrock is not trying to reinvent construction from scratch. Instead, it is focused on upgrading the machines contractors already use—so they can work more efficiently, safely and consistently.
Founded in 2024 by former Waymo engineers, Bedrock develops systems that allow heavy equipment to operate with increasing levels of autonomy. Its software and hardware can be retrofitted onto machines such as excavators, bulldozers and loaders. Rather than relying on one-off robotic tools, the company is building a connected platform that lets fleets of machines understand their surroundings and coordinate with one another on job sites.
This is what Bedrock calls “system-level autonomy”. Its technology combines cameras, lidar and AI models to help machines perceive terrain, detect obstacles, track work progress and carry out tasks like digging and grading with precision. Human supervisors remain in control, monitoring operations and stepping in when needed. Over time, Bedrock aims to reduce the amount of direct intervention those machines require.
The funding comes as contractors face rising pressure to deliver projects faster and with fewer available workers. In the press release, Bedrock notes that the industry needs nearly 800,000 additional workers over the next two years and that project backlogs have grown to more than eight months. These constraints are pushing firms to explore new ways to keep sites productive without compromising safety or quality.
Bedrock states that autonomy can help address those challenges. Not by removing people from the equation—but by allowing crews to supervise more equipment at once and reduce idle time. If machines can operate longer, with better awareness of their environment, sites can run more smoothly and with fewer disruptions.
The company has already started deploying its system in large-scale excavation work, including manufacturing and infrastructure projects. Contractors are using Bedrock’s platform to test how autonomous equipment can support real-world operations at scale, particularly in earthmoving tasks that demand precision and consistency.
From a business standpoint, the Series B funding will allow Bedrock to expand both its technology and its customer deployments. The company has also strengthened its leadership team with senior hires from Meta and Waymo, deepening its focus on AI evaluation, safety and operational growth. Bedrock says it is targeting its first fully operator-less excavator deployments with customers in 2026—a milestone for autonomy in complex construction equipment.
In that context, this round is not just about capital. It is about giving Bedrock the runway to prove that autonomous systems can move from controlled pilots into everyday use on job sites. The company bets that the future of construction will be shaped less by individual machines—and more by coordinated, intelligent systems that work alongside human crews.
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The quiet infrastructure shift powering the next generation of data centers
Updated
January 30, 2026 11:42 AM
Peripheral Component Interconnect Express (PCIe) port on a motherboard, coloured yellow. PHOTO: UNSPLASH
Modern data centers operate on a simple yet fundamental principle: computers require the ability to share data extremely quickly. As AI and cloud systems grow, servers are no longer confined to a single rack. They are spread across many racks, sometimes across entire rooms. When that happens, moving data quickly and cleanly becomes harder.
Montage Technology, a Shanghai-based semiconductor company, builds the chips and connection systems that help servers exchange data without delays. This week, the company announced a new Active Electrical Cable (AEC) solution based on PCIe 6.x and CXL 3.x — two important standards used to connect CPUs, GPUs, network cards and storage inside modern data centers.
In simple terms, Montage’s new AEC product helps different parts of a data center “talk” to each other faster and more reliably, even when those parts are physically far apart.
As data centers grow to support AI and cloud workloads, their architecture is changing. Instead of everything sitting inside one rack, systems now stretch across multiple racks and even multiple rows. This creates a new problem: the longer the distance between machines, the harder it is to keep data signals clean and fast.
This is where Active Electrical Cables come in. Unlike regular copper cables, AECs include small electronic components inside the cable itself. These components strengthen and clean up the data signal as it travels, so information can move farther without getting distorted or delayed.
Montage’s solution uses its own retimer chip based on PCIe 6.x and CXL 3.x. A “retimer” refreshes the data signal so it arrives accurately at the other end. This allows servers, GPUs, storage devices and network cards to stay tightly connected even across longer distances inside large data centers.
The company also uses high-density cable designs and built-in monitoring tools so operators can track performance and fix issues faster. That makes large data centers easier to deploy and maintain.
According to Montage, the solution has already passed interoperability tests with CPUs, xPUs, PCIe switches and network cards. It has also been jointly developed with cable manufacturers in China and validated at the system level.
What makes this development important is not just speed. It is about scale. AI models, cloud services and real-time applications demand massive amounts of data to move continuously between machines. If that movement slows down, everything else slows with it.
By improving how machines connect across racks, Montage’s AEC solution supports the kind of infrastructure that next-generation AI and cloud systems depend on.
Looking ahead, the company plans to expand its high-speed interconnect products further, including work on PCIe 7.0 and Ethernet retimer technologies.
Quietly, in the background of every AI system and cloud service, there is a network of cables and chips doing the hard work of moving data. Montage’s latest launch focuses on making that hidden layer faster, cleaner and ready for the scale that modern computing now demands.