Software Engineer - AI

Berlin-based Kuro raises €10 million to build the AI foundation for general contractors. October 2, 2026 Kuro Technology, a Berlin-based ConTech startup that builds AI software to help general contractors, has raised €10 million in a funding round. The round was led by UVC Partners, a Munich- and Berlin-based venture capital firm with more than €800 million in assets under management and known for backing companies such as Isar Aerospace, Proxima Fusion, and Aleph Alpha. The round also saw participation from Foundamental, Realyze Ventures, and helloworld. "We're delighted to be working with Lea and Jonas. 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," said Dr. Ingo Potthof, Managing Partner at UVC Partners. 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." Kuro Technology was founded in November 2024 by Lea Scherer and Jonas Minkler, who had previously held leadership positions at construction-tech companies alcemy and Capmo. The Berlin-based company now employs 16 people and designs a platform to tackle a core inefficiency in construction: general contractors. The company argues that general contractors sit at the centre of every project, and their sales, estimating, procurement and site management teams spend around half their time sifting through project documentation and making sense of the data. Kuro is built to fix that with a platform that processes these documents and links them into a single data model. On top of this model, Kuro builds a customer-specific rulebook covering their specific building components, review criteria and work packages. The platform flags contradictions between drawings and specifications before they become costly mistakes, assesses risk, improves 3D model components, processes public tenders and evaluates subcontractor bids. When an estimator makes a correction, it is saved into the rulebook, meaning the same fix doesn't need to be made again on the next project. 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. Its 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," said Scherer, co-founder and CEO of Kuro Technology. Kuro plans to use the fund to build out its AI platform for general contractors that learns and improves with every project. Minkler, co-founder and CPO of Kuro Technology, said, "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 announces €10 million seed round to expand construction AI for contractors. On September 30, 2026, Berlin-based Kuro announced a €10 million seed round led by UVC Partners, with Foundamental, Realyze Ventures and helloworld participating. The financing backs an attempt to extend its bid-document software into other contractor workflows, but the published evidence for commercial use centers on estimating. The round and its disclosed terms. Neither the investor announcement nor counsel's account states a valuation, individual investor contributions or when proceeds became available. A Kuro recruiting post marked September 23 described an €8 million seed round. The September 30 announcements give the figure as €10 million but do not explain the difference; the earlier post does not establish a separate completed round or show when any terms changed. What contractors use. Kuro sells software that connects project documents with a contractor's own rules to help teams examine tenders, find conflicting specifications and carry decisions into later projects. UVC says Kuro has 12 customers, including six among the 20 largest general contractors in the German-speaking region. The announced customer names include HOCHTIEF Infrastructure, Goldbeck, Köster, Implenia, Geiger and Riedel. A case study published by Kuro describes Köster using more than 1,000 estimating questions across over 40 trades to organize project information, with answers linked to source documents for staff to review. It reports a survey-based average saving of six hours a week per estimating employee. UVC separately reports about 90 hours saved per bid and says 70% of users found information they would otherwise have missed. The weekly employee figure and per-bid figure measure different things, and the published material does not provide the underlying survey results or an independent assessment of savings. The expansion Kuro is funding. Co-founder Jonas Minkler says Kuro started with estimation because that is where bid decisions begin, then saw the same problems with conflicting data and lost project knowledge elsewhere in contractors' operations. UVC managing partner Ingo Potthof points to the estimating use cases and named contractors as reasons for backing a wider platform. For contractors, the proposed benefit is finding tender risks before setting a price and reusing judgments rather than checking the same material afresh. Investor counsel says the capital is intended to support expansion into sales, procurement and construction execution. Kuro's product page advertises tools beyond bid review, but neither that page nor the Köster case study establishes customer adoption of all the planned workflows. Kuro has not disclosed customer contract values, recurring revenue or retention in the reviewed announcements.