Building Beautiful Homes with Robots: The Future of Construction (Salar al Khafaji, CEO & Founder of Monumental)

Speaker A: We're trying to make construction faster, more affordable, and more beautiful. We want to be able to build a beautiful house within a day in the future, which is not something we can do today, just to be clear. Right. But that's the vision we're striving for. Speaker B: How did you land on deciding to take on construction, which is not an industry that has been super friendly to venture capital? Speaker A: I think when you're in software, everything seems to be about technology, right? And then when you zoom out and think about what is the economy made of, literally think about what is GDP made of, it's actually like such a tiny part of it.

Energy is obviously really big. Construction infrastructure is really big. Education is really big. Speaker B: When you get a subcontracting job, what robots are coming into the process? What does that process look like? Speaker C: We would actually deploy today 4 or 8 systems at the same time. When I say system, it's actually like 3 robots working together. One brings the bricks, one brings the mortar, and then the one that actually does the bricklaying. Speaker A: But we still need operators today for a bunch of things. Instead of having to get 100% perfection with technology, we're just already delivering value and just increasing automation along the way.

Speaker B: Hey, I'm Mario, and this is The Generalist Podcast. Speaker D: As the saying goes, the future is already here. Speaker B: It's just not evenly distributed. Speaker D: Each week I sit down with the founders, investors, and visionaries who are living in the future to help you see what's coming next and understand it more clearly. Speaker B: Today I'm speaking with Salar Alkuffaji, the CEO and founder of Monumental. Speaker D: Monumental builds robots to assemble buildings, starting with its autonomous bricklaying system. Speaker B: Salar's goal is to shake the construction industry out of its decades-long stagnation and empower humankind to create beautiful buildings faster and more efficiently.