Exclusive: Xpanner Lands $18M To Offer ‘Automation As A Service’ To Construction Sites 

Xpanner, a startup automating construction work through robotics and physical AI technology, has raised $18 million in a Series B round, the company tells Crunchbase News exclusively.

Existing backer Korea Investment Partners (KIP) led the financing, which is described as a bridge round. KB Investment Co. (KBIC) also participated. The raise brings Santa Fe Springs, California-based Xpanner’s total funding to $38 million since its 2020 inception.

Xpanner turns construction equipment that customers already own into automated assets “without replacing a single machine,” according to Henri Lee, the company’s co-founder and CEO. 

Its flagship product, X1 Kit, retrofits existing equipment with hardware and software that enable autonomous operation. Customers subscribe to task-specific automation licenses such as piling, material handling, trenching and grading through XPanner’s Automation-as-a-Service (AaaS) model. 

“There’s no upfront investment, no rip-and-replace,” Lee added. “Like a smartphone gaining new capabilities through app updates, customers expand their automation through simple software updates.”

The benefits for its customers include significant cost savings and shorter project durations, according to Lee.

Originally founded in South Korea, Xpanner moved its headquarters to the U.S. in 2023. Today, Mortenson, Black & Veatch, and QCells are among its customers. 

Notably, all of Xpanner’s co-founders have deep industry experience. Lee spent two decades in executive positions at Bobcat and Hyundai Infracore, driving unmanned construction projects and corporate venture initiatives in the heavy equipment world. CFO Ryan Park spent over 12 years working in heavy equipment at Bobcat, followed by eight years in venture capital at Korea’s largest commercial bank. CTO David Shin led robotics and automation at Volvo Construction Equipment for 20 years, becoming the first in the industry to commercialize semi-automation features for construction machinery.

Growth and a path to profitability

Xpanner is refreshingly transparent about its financials. The company grew revenue from $3 million in 2023 to $7 million in 2024 to $21 million in 2025, according to Park. It saw $8 million in revenue and $1 million in EBIT (earnings before interest and taxes) in the first quarter of 2026.

The startup is targeting $60 million in ARR by year’s end.

Impressively, the company says it maintains a gross margin above 80%, thanks mostly to its subscription-based AaaS model. It achieved monthly break-even in 2025, and Park said Xpanner is on track for full-year profitability this year.

“Once hardware is deployed, incremental subscription and service revenue flows at near-zero marginal cost,” he said. 

The company plans to use its new capital in part to strengthen its development capabilities by advancing its next-generation physical AI hardware and software platform, deepening its core component engineering, and expanding its data and AI infrastructure. 

Some of its customers are still on a perpetual modular model, which includes the one-time purchase of its X1 Kit hardware paired with its software. Looking ahead, Xpanner expects to be fully on its subscription model by the end of the year. 

The company is also actively expanding into adjacent verticals, including battery energy storage systems (BESS) and AI data center construction.

‘Strong gross margins, near-zero churn’

Sangjoon Park, managing director at KIP, told Crunchbase News via email that his firm was impressed by Xpanner’s commercial traction and unit economics.

“Strong gross margins, near-zero churn, and rapid account expansion are signals that the value proposition is real and not pilot-driven,” he said.

Kiho Lee, director at KBIC, believes that most construction automation companies hit a scalability wall because they automate entire machines end-to-end. However, he said that since Xpanner’s task-specific approach scales through software rather than hardware redesign, the company “can expand wallet share inside accounts without proportional cost.”

“That’s a software-economics business operating in a hardware-dominated market, and it’s rare,” he wrote via e-mail.

Physical AI funding smashes records

Xpanner sits at the intersection of two sectors that have received strong interest from investors in recent years.

Startups working on physical AI — real-world applications of artificial intelligence, including technologies such as automated hardware and robotics — have already hauled in more than $37 billion in venture funding globally this year, Crunchbase data shows, shattering the full-year record of $21 billion set in both 2025 and 2021.

At the same time, venture investment in real estate and property-related startups rebounded last year, largely driven by funding to AI-centric companies.

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Illustration: Dom Guzman