Analysis
Origin emerged from stealth with $20 million in total funding, co-led by Accel and Zacua Ventures, to build general-purpose robots for interior construction, according to Pulse 2.0. Its first robot, OG-1, autonomously applies compound, sands and primes drywall -- working on high walls, corners, pillars, soffits and edges up to 14 feet, without a cordoned-off work area separating it from the human crew around it.
The San Francisco company was founded in early 2025 by Yogesh Ghaturle, Ashish Daga and Tushar Makkar. Ghaturle previously founded Perpule, a cloud point-of-sale company Amazon acquired in 2021 -- a software exit before this much harder hardware bet. Daga built precision automation hardware at Morphle Labs, and Makkar led AI teams at Eightfold AI. Their backers beyond Accel and Zacua include Unilazer Ventures, Schema Ventures, Z21, and a notable list of angel investors from Anduril, Skild AI, 1X and Tesla -- a roster that reads like a bet that construction robotics belongs in the same category as defense and humanoid robotics rather than a niche of its own. Accel has backed several of Pulse's prior AI infrastructure deals, making this its latest bet on physical rather than software AI.
“The San Francisco company was founded in early 2025 by Yogesh Ghaturle, Ashish Daga and Tushar Makkar.”
What stands out is speed to deployment: Origin put its first robots on New York construction sites within 10 months of founding, and is now working with two of the largest U.S. drywall finishing contractors across commercial space, multifamily housing, data centers, hotels and warehouses. That's unusually fast for a hardware company -- robotics startups commonly spend several years moving from prototype to paid commercial work. Origin is targeting pilots in Germany, Sweden, France and Saudi Arabia next, with a goal of 150 deployed robots by the end of 2027.
The company says OG-1 works at three times human speed with human-level quality, but that figure is Origin's own claim; no customer has independently confirmed it, and Origin hasn't disclosed revenue. The article names no direct competitors, and construction robotics remains a sparsely funded category compared with warehouse or humanoid robotics -- which is either white space Origin can own early, or a sign the category hasn't proven out enough for more capital to show up yet. The next real test isn't the 14-foot reach or the drywall finish quality; it's whether Origin's 150-robot target survives contact with four new countries and labor rules that New York's first 10 months didn't have to deal with.