Building a home can get as complicated as you'd like. And, now, it can also be almost unimaginably simple because of a technological and design breakthrough by Austin-based ICON.
The 3D printed home startup unveiled its first 3D printed home in March this year during SXSW, and that has, in turn, become the first 3D printed home to get a building permit in the U.S., the company says.
Now, ICON has a whole new batch of big-name investors that have contributed to a $9 million seed round of funding. The round, announced Wednesday, is led by Oakhouse Partners, an early-stage investment firm in San Francisco that has invested in SpaceX, Zipline and Palantir.
“What the ICON team has accomplished in such a short period of time is not only a transformational breakthrough in homebuilding, it is an inspiration for the entire world to think outside the box about how humanity will confront the global housing crisis," Jason Portnoy, a managing partner at Oakhouse Partners, said in a news release.
Other investors include D.R. Horton, which is one of the nation's most active homebuilders, and Emaar, which was a developer on the Burj Khalifa in the United Arab Emirates. Other investors include Capital Factory, CAZ Investments, Cielo Property Group, Engage Ventues, MicroVentures, Saturn Five, Shadow Ventures, Trust Ventures, Verbene Road Holdings and Vulcan Capital, an investment firm founded by Microsoft co-founder and philanthropist Paul Allen, who passed away this week.
This marks one of the first publicly-known investments for Trust Ventures, a new Austin firm with backing from the Koch brothers.
The funding also marks another milestone for ICON, which was founded by Jason Ballard, who previously founded TreeHouse, Vesta Printers co-founder Alex Le Roux, and Evan Loomis, also a TreeHouse co-founder.
The company drew headlines from around the world when it announced earlier this year it had developed a large 3D printer capable of printing an 800-square-foot home for about $4,000 in less than 24 hours -- and with almost no waste. The average home in the U.S. takes about three to six months to build and costs $200,000-plus.
“It’s our mission at ICON to re-imagine the approach to homebuilding and construction and make affordable, dignified housing available to everyone throughout the world,” Ballard said in a news release. “We’re in the middle of a global housing crisis and making old approaches a little better is not solving the problem."
ICON has been working with nonprofit New Story, which went through the Y-Combinator accelerator and is using water, financial and educational technology to help build communities in developing nations.
The company plans to develop and launch a new version of its big 3D printers next year.
