Berlin's Kuro Raises $10.8M to Revolutionize Construction AI

Jan de Vries · 2026-10-02

### Berlin's Kuro Raises $10.8M to Revolutionize Construction AI Kuro Technology, a Berlin-based ConTech startup, just raised €10 million (about $10.8 million) to build AI software that helps general contractors work smarter. The funding round was led by UVC Partners, a Munich and Berlin VC firm with over €800 million (around $864 million) under management. 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've known each other for years, long before Kuro was founded. They bring deep startup experience and industry knowledge, which is crucial in construction." He added, "And it's paying off: they're already delivering measurable value with their first use cases in estimating, and gradually extending to procurement, accounting, and compliance. The fast-growing customer base of leading general contractors proves their strategy is right." ### The Brains Behind Kuro Kuro was founded in November 2024 by Lea Scherer and Jonas Minkler, who previously held leadership roles at construction-tech companies alcemy and Capmo. The company now has 16 employees and is on a mission to tackle a core inefficiency in construction. General contractors sit at the center of every project. Their teams spend about half their time sifting through project documentation and making sense of data. Kuro's platform processes these 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. ### How It Works - Flags contradictions between drawings and specifications before they become costly mistakes. - Assesses risk and improves 3D model components. - Processes public tenders and evaluates subcontractor bids. - Saves corrections into the rulebook, so the same fix isn't needed again. According to UVC Partners, Kuro's customers save around 90 hours per bid, and 70% of users say the tool surfaced information they would have otherwise missed. Clients include Goldbeck, Köster, Implenia, Geiger, Riedel, and Hochtief Infrastructure—six of the largest general contractors in the German-speaking region. > "We see the construction industry as the foundation for progress in Europe. 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." – Lea Scherer, co-founder and CEO of Kuro Technology ### What's Next for Kuro? Kuro plans to use the funds to build out its AI platform, making it learn and improve with every project. Jonas 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. That's why we're expanding step by step across the entire back office, building a system that learns and gets better with every project." With this fresh capital, Kuro is poised to transform how general contractors operate, making construction more efficient and less dependent on individual expertise.