Veev raises $400M to scale tech-enabled homebuilding
Housing Wire
Joe Burns
March 1, 2022
Veev, a California-based homebuilding company, announced raising a $400 million Series D led by BOND, according to a press release shared with FinLedger.
The company says it will use the funding to scale its operations, accelerate its research and development and expand construction into new markets. LenX, Zeev Ventures and Fifth Wall also participated in the round, which brings Veev’s total funding to date to $600 million.
As traditional homebuilding methods struggle to solve America’s housing inventory crisis, Veev is using a new turnkey, panelized approach to expedite production, improve sustainability and reduce the cost of building a home.
“Veev reimagined the entire homebuilding process by thinking about the home-as-a-product – the ultimate consumer product,” stated Amit Haller, Veev CEO and co-founder, in the release.
“By rethinking every element of the home, including design, materials, and the built environment, and fully integrating the homebuilding process from start to finish, we have managed to produce homes at a quality, speed, value, and sustainability that is unseen in the industry – until now,” Haller said.
The company accomplishes this through a turnkey panelized approach, providing pre-inspected, fully cladded walls directly to building sites for installation. These walls also come with mechanical, electrical and plumbing components already included, and use a plug-and-play system to reduce the need for skilled labor.
Through this building process, Veev says it can build homes up to four times faster than standard construction industry standards, which in turn can bring down costs significantly. It says “radical innovation is necessary across the entire value chain, from materials, to methods, to partnerships,” considering the 7 million unit housing supply deficit estimated by the U.S. Census Bureau.
The company also says its materials are sustainable and result in 47% less CO2e (carbon dioxide equivalent) than traditional home construction. It states its Light Gauge Steel (LGS) framing and High Performance Surface (HPS) materials are lighter, stronger and more sustainable than wood and drywall. The company plans to further reduce its carbon footprint an additional 25% in 2022.
The company heavily leans on artificial intelligence, using software to automate 70% of its building design across the mechanical, engineering and plumbing functions, which it says reduces errors, improves speed and opens up teams to develop all-inclusive blueprints faster.
While stronger, more sustainable materials give Veev a leg up on traditional building methods, the company says bringing the entire homebuilding process in-house enables it to sidestep the fragmented, volatile nature of the traditional construction process.
This Series D follows a period of rapid growth for the homebuilding company. The company recently announced a partnership with Lennar to build 102 attached homes in Northern California. It also completed a 78-unit emergency housing development in San Jose in only 90 days.
A Veev spokesperson told FinLedger the company now plans to use the funding to replicate its Digital Fabs (where the prefab walls and studs are fabricated) near regional demand, “in a similar fashion to the distribution center approach that has provided some of the biggest e-commerce giants with so much success.”
In other recent proptech news, JLL beat its expected Q4 earnings with an emphasis on its growing proptech stack. Here also launched its vacation rental marketplace and announced a $2 million pre-seed fundraise.