While AI—artificial or augmented intelligence, depending on your focus—is gaining traction in many industries, construction isn’t a hotbed of the technology’s implementation. That’s changing, slowly, as more construction-applicable applications come to market. Construction-focused apps are still rare, however, so when one gets serious funding it gains attention.

ALICE Technologies has closed $8 million in Series A funding led by Merus Capital with participation from Foundamental, Blackhorn Ventures and Lightspeed Venture Partners. Why is this important? Founded in 2015, from research at Stanford University, ALICE Technologies is a construction simulation platform that leverages artificial intelligence to analyze a project’s complex building requirements and generate highly efficient building plans. ALICE enables contractors and owners to plan, bid, and build more effectively, reducing construction durations and labor costs by $30 million for a typical $500 million construction project.

ALICE, the application, leverages artificial intelligence to analyze a project’s building requirements and generate highly efficient construction plans. Using ALICE, project teams now can explore a variety of building plans in realtime and better understand the impact of key construction decisions on the two metrics that matter most: project cost and duration.

Since its initial product release in early 2018, ALICE has intrigued developers and general contractors across Asia, the Nordics, the Middle East, and North America. ALICE is currently being used to plan projects by contractors including Hawaiian Dredging Construction Co., AF Gruppen, and Parsons.