# Build raises $8.5M to speed up the paperwork behind data centres > Source: > Published: 2026-07-01 14:02:49+00:00 *The AI boom needs somewhere to live. Data centres, power lines, and factories all start with months of paperwork before a single wall goes up. A British-founded startup says its AI can cut that grind by 95 per cent.* The company is Build, and on Tuesday it raised $8.5mn (€7.4mn) in seed funding led by Index Ventures. Pebblebed, Puzzle Ventures, and Tiny.vc joined, alongside a notable set of angels. They include OpenAI’s chief financial officer Sarah Friar and Blackstone’s chief technology officer John Stecher, [Build told Tech Funding News](https://techfundingnews.com/build-8-5m-index-ventures-ai-infrastructure-due-diligence/). Build works on the unglamorous front end of construction. Before anyone builds a data centre or a power plant, consultants spend weeks on site sourcing, technical due diligence, power assessments, and environmental checks. Build automates that work. It pulls from more than 1,600 data sources and weighs planning, power, and political risks in parallel rather than one after another. The company says this cuts due-diligence timelines by more than 95 per cent, turning weeks into hours. ## Selling work, not software The twist sits in the business model. Most AI startups sell software licences. Build sells the work itself, on a monthly retainer, and casts itself as a replacement for consultants rather than a tool for them. “We achieve software margins by automating much of our work, but our focus is on services spend, not software spend,” co-founder and chief executive James Stirrat-Ellis told Tech Funding News. A human still reviews each assessment before it goes out. It is a model gaining ground in property tech. Paris-based [Davis](https://thenextweb.com/news/davis-5-5m-pre-seed-architectural-ai-gaudi-1) takes a similar route, handing clients finished feasibility studies rather than a subscription. Build’s raise is one part of a wider surge. [EU-Startups tallies](https://www.eu-startups.com/2026/06/british-u-s-startup-build-secures-e7-4-million-to-accelerate-agentic-real-estate-platform/) roughly €112mn flowing into built-environment and construction AI across 2026. ## Riding the data-centre gold rush The timing is the point. The scramble to build AI capacity has turned land, power, and permits into the industry’s tightest bottleneck. It is [a multi-trillion-dollar infrastructure problem](https://thenextweb.com/news/2-trillion-ai-infrastructure-problem-shashidhar-bhat), and demand is outrunning what traditional developers can deliver. Hyperscalers are set to pour close to $700bn into data centres by 2026. New sites are rising fast, from [Europe’s largest buildouts](https://thenextweb.com/news/nscale-portugal-microsoft-neocloud-ai-infrastructure) to Blackstone’s [first AI-era data-centre REIT](https://thenextweb.com/news/blackstone-bxdc-data-center-reit-ipo). Every one of them needs the early groundwork Build sells. That has pulled in serious customers quickly. Build has run more than 100 projects across 15 countries, for clients including the property giant Tishman Speyer, and it recently landed its first hyperscaler. Stirrat-Ellis calls that “the top customer you can get” in data-centre work. The firm is still tiny, at around 10 staff across four continents, with plans to hire more. ## An architect who learned to code The idea came from frustration. Stirrat-Ellis trained as an architect and worked on the S$13bn expansion of Singapore’s Changi Airport. There he watched lengthy consultant reports and scattered data drag projects out. He left a master’s programme at Harvard, taught himself to code, and founded Build in 2024 with the AI researcher Ben McClusky. Index Ventures, fresh from deals such as its [$60mn bet on Conduct](https://thenextweb.com/news/conduct-60-million-series-a-index-iconiq-sap), moved quickly. “The round came to us. We got a term sheet within a day,” Stirrat-Ellis said. Whether Build can hold its lead is the open question. Big consultancies such as CBRE, Arup, and JLL are adding AI of their own. Build’s wager is that replacing them beats helping them, and that the firm which maps the ground fastest wins the race to build. ## Get the TNW newsletter Get the most important tech news in your inbox each week.