Berlin's Kuro Just Raised $11M to Fix Construction's Biggest Time Sink

Jan de Vries · 2026-10-02

Kuro Technology, a Berlin-based construction tech startup, just closed a $11 million funding round. The company builds AI software that helps general contractors stop drowning in paperwork. If you've ever watched a construction project stall because of conflicting specs, you get why this matters. The round was led by UVC Partners, a Munich- and Berlin-based VC firm managing over $860 million in assets. They've backed companies like Isar Aerospace, Proxima Fusion, and Aleph Alpha. Foundamental, Realyze Ventures, and helloworld also joined in. "We're delighted to be working with Lea and Jonas," said Dr. Ingo Potthof, Managing Partner at UVC Partners. "We have known each other for many years, since well before Kuro was founded. They bring years of startup experience and deep industry knowledge, which matters a great deal in construction." He added, "And it's paying off: they are already delivering measurable value to customers with their first use cases in estimating, and are gradually extending the product to other back-office processes such as procurement, accounting, and compliance. The fast-growing customer base of leading general contractors proves their strategy right." ### What Kuro Actually Does Kuro was founded in November 2024 by Lea Scherer and Jonas Minkler. Both had previously held leadership roles at construction-tech companies alcemy and Capmo. The company now employs 16 people and is tackling a core inefficiency: general contractors sit at the center of every project, yet their teams spend roughly half their time sifting through project documentation and making sense of data. Kuro's platform processes those documents and links them into a single data model. On top of that, it builds a customer-specific rulebook covering building components, review criteria, and work packages. The platform flags contradictions between drawings and specifications before they become costly mistakes. It assesses risk, improves 3D model components, processes public tenders, and evaluates subcontractor bids. Here's the clever part: when an estimator makes a correction, it gets saved into the rulebook. That means the same fix doesn't need to be made again on the next project. Over time, the system learns and gets better. ### The Results Are Speaking According to UVC Partners, Kuro's customers are saving around 90 hours per bid. And 70% of users say the tool surfaced information they would have otherwise missed. That's not just a nice-to-have—that's real money and real time. Its clients include Goldbeck, Köster, Implenia, Geiger, Riedel, and Hochtief Infrastructure—six of the largest general contractors in the German-speaking region. These aren't small shops. They're the heavy hitters. > "We see the construction industry as the foundation for progress in Europe," said Scherer, co-founder and CEO of Kuro Technology. "With Kuro, our job is to give it the technical foundation it needs to live up to this continent's ambition. The general contractors that manage to turn their knowledge into a product will depend less on individual people as they grow." ### What's Next for Kuro The fresh $11 million will go toward building out the AI platform so it learns and improves with every project. Minkler, co-founder and CPO, explained: "We started in estimation because that's where a project is born and decided. But the problems carry through into everything that follows: too much contradictory data and knowledge that isn't passed on from project to project. That's why we're now expanding the platform step by step across the entire back office, building a system that learns and gets better with every project." Kuro isn't just another AI tool. It's a system that captures institutional knowledge and makes it reusable. For an industry where experience often walks out the door when a veteran retires, that could be a game-changer. The construction industry has been notoriously slow to digitize. But with startups like Kuro attracting serious capital and signing up major contractors, that's starting to change. And if the early numbers hold up—90 hours saved per bid, 70% of users finding missed info—it's not hard to see why investors are paying attention.