A group of engineers who helped build Waymo’s self-driving robotaxi empire is now tackling a very different industry: heavy construction.

Bedrock Robotics, founded last year by Waymo veteran Boris Sofman and fellow ex-Waymo colleagues Ajay Gummalla, Kevin Peterson and Tom Eliaz, has emerged from stealth mode with $80 million in funding and a big ambition: to make giant dirt diggers fully autonomous and capable of working around the clock, no human operators needed.

The San Francisco startup isn’t building its own excavators from scratch. Instead, it’s retrofitting existing machines with cameras, lidar, onboard computers and AI software. “It’s another one of those transportation-style spaces that is due for a wave of what’s happening in transportation,” said Sofman.

Bedrock’s first target is the workhorse of construction sites — the excavator. Autonomous prototypes are already being tested in Arizona, Texas and Arkansas. If all goes well, “we expect to get the first operator-out form in 2026,” said Sofman, who holds a PhD in robotics from Carnegie Mellon.

Waymo’s track record was the catalyst. “Waymo’s success with robotaxis shows the state of technology just being right, where we’re seeing it work on one of the hardest applications in the world,” Sofman told Forbes. “That’s exactly the type of building block that catalyzes change.”

It’s coming at a time when the U.S. construction industry faces conflicting pressures — booming demand for housing, data centers and factories on one hand, and a shrinking skilled labor pool on the other. “It’s this fascinating situation where you have an astronomical macroeconomic tail and a need to re-industrialize the U.S.,” Sofman said. “At the same time, the labor pool, even more aggressively than what we saw in trucking, is going the opposite direction.”

Experts say the technology is unlikely to erase human jobs entirely. Instead, it will help fill gaps and free human workers to focus on complex tasks. “We’re not instantly going from people to no people. I don’t think anybody thinks that’s a reality of what could happen,” said Eric Cylwik, director of innovation at Sundt Construction, which is partnering with Bedrock to test the technology.

Bedrock’s lidar system can create 3D maps of ground conditions in real time, and track exactly how much dirt each excavator moves — critical data for contractors who often rely on manual surveys for payment milestones. “There are some deep-seated impacts on the business of construction by being able to analyze that much data that quickly,” Cylwik said.

John Krafcik, Waymo’s former CEO, has invested in Bedrock too. “Boris has assembled an extraordinary founding team, many of whom I had the privilege of working with,” Krafcik said. “It’s an exceptional group with the technical depth, grit and vision to make autonomous construction machines real.”

The goal is not to compete with industry giants like Caterpillar or Deere but to make their machines smarter. “We’re not competing with Caterpillar and trying to make machines. We’re trying to make machines more intelligent,” Sofman said. “It becomes a very complementary element to the whole ecosystem.”

While the first commercial rollout is planned for 2026, Bedrock’s autonomous excavators could help ease bottlenecks on mega projects, especially in areas with extreme temperatures or overnight work requirements. Investors backing the startup include Eclipse, 8VC, Two Sigma Ventures, Valor Equity Partners, Nvidia’s NVentures and real estate giant Tishman Speyer.

Bedrock’s strategy also sidesteps many of the regulatory headaches faced by robotaxis and self-driving trucks — construction sites are private property, and excavators move at a human pace. This could help the company reach the market faster and prove autonomy’s business case where it’s needed most.

In the words of Sofman: “When you tally up all the ways we use these specialized heavy machines, it’s clear this industry is ready for an upgrade.”

Originally reported by Alan Ohnsman in Forbes.