Origin has emerged from stealth with $20 million in total funding to build general-purpose robots for interior construction. The financing was co-led by Accel and Zacua Ventures, with participation from Unilazer Ventures, Schema Ventures, Z21, and angel investors from Anduril, Skild AI, 1X, and Tesla.
The San Francisco-based physical AI company plans to use the capital primarily to deploy and expand the fleet of OG-1, its flagship construction robot. Funding will also support large-scale customer pilots in the U.S. and Europe and the expansion of Origin’s robotics platform into additional interior construction trades.
Origin is already working with two of the largest drywall finishing contractors in the U.S. and plans additional pilots in Germany, Sweden, France, and Saudi Arabia. The company is targeting construction companies facing growing project backlogs and shortages of skilled workers.
OG-1 is designed as a modular robotic platform capable of performing multiple interior construction jobs. Its initial application is autonomous wall finishing, including applying compound, sanding, and priming walls. The robot can perform tasks involving high walls, corners, pillars, soffits, and edges and can operate at heights of up to 14 feet.
The system operates on a three-wheeled platform with a 360-degree view of its surroundings and uses real-time force control for contact-intensive tasks such as sanding. Origin designed OG-1 to work alongside construction crews without requiring a separate cordoned-off work area. Its interchangeable tools are intended to enable the same hardware platform to support additional trades over time.
OG-1 is powered by Origin’s Construction Action Model, a foundation model developed specifically for construction. The system combines a reasoning engine that plans complex workflows, an action policy that handles navigation and task execution, and a controller that translates those decisions into precise physical movements. The model is trained using high-fidelity simulations and data generated from deployments on live job sites.
Origin deployed its first robots on New York construction sites within 10 months of its founding and is now operating across commercial spaces, multifamily housing, data centers, hotels, and warehouses. The company said its robots are performing work at three times human speed while maintaining human-level quality across different site conditions.
Origin plans to have 150 robots deployed by the end of 2027. Beyond wall finishing and painting, the company intends to expand OG-1 into tasks including taping, drywall installation, drilling, and conduit installation using the same hardware platform and Construction Action Model.
Founded in early 2025 by Yogesh Ghaturle, Ashish Daga, and Tushar Makkar, Origin combines experience in entrepreneurship, artificial intelligence, and industrial automation. Ghaturle previously founded cloud point-of-sale company Perpule, which Amazon acquired in 2021. Makkar previously led AI teams at Eightfold AI, while Daga developed precision automation hardware at digital pathology company Morphle Labs.
KEY QUOTES:
“Every customer we work with has more demand and project backlogs than their teams can deliver. They’re leaving revenue on the table because they don’t have enough skilled people, and demand is only growing. Over the last century, construction has only mechanized or automated heavy exterior work. But much of the skilled work inside the building, which accounts for more than 65% of the construction timelines, is still done by hand. We started Origin to bring physical AI to interior trades. We think of Origin as a time machine for construction, helping crews complete work faster while moving the industry toward autonomous job sites. Wall finishing and painting are only our starting trades; our ambition is to automate the full range of interior trades so contractors can build faster with consistent quality.”
Yogesh Ghaturle, Co-Founder And CEO Of Origin
“Too many construction robots perform well in a lab and fail within a week on a live job site. Origin built for the job site from the start, and it shows in the results: the robot works, crews trust it, and the company can manufacture it at volume. With the industry losing skilled tradespeople faster than it can train them, that reliability is what turns a promising technology into a company worth backing.”
Vivin Hegde, Founding Partner At Zacua Ventures
“We believe a foundational physical AI model built specifically for construction is the right approach to win in this massive market, where robotics has barely scratched the surface. The Origin team has moved at an incredible pace since we first partnered with them, and their early customer traction shows the technology is ready and the market is waiting. We are excited to back Yogesh, Tushar and Ashish as they bring AI to the built world, making construction faster, safer and more economical.”
Anagh Prasad, Investor At Accel
“We spent 18 months building before coming out of stealth because we wanted to prove what our robots could do on real job sites. Today, our robots are already working at three times human speed, delivering human-level quality and generalising across different site conditions. Now we’re focused on bringing that capability to more sites and more trades.”
Yogesh Ghaturle, Co-Founder And CEO Of Origin
