Insider Brief
- Origin has emerged from stealth with $20 million in funding co-led by Accel and Zacua Ventures to expand deployment of its OG-1 robot, which autonomously handles drywall finishing tasks such as applying compound, sanding and priming.
- The company plans to use the funding to build its fleet, support pilots in the U.S. and Europe and extend OG-1 into additional interior trades including taping, drywall installation, drilling and conduit installation, with a target of 150 deployed robots by the end of 2027.
- OG-1 runs on Origin’s Construction Action Model, which combines task planning, autonomous action and feedback-driven control, while the company said its robots are already working across commercial buildings, multifamily housing, data centers, hotels and warehouses.
Origin has emerged from stealth with $20 million in funding to expand deployment of its OG-1 robot, which autonomously performs drywall finishing work on construction sites.
Accel and Zacua Ventures co-led the financing, with participation from Unilazer Ventures, Schema Ventures, Z21, ISAI and Imad Ventures, along with angel investors from Anduril, Skild AI, 1X and Tesla, according to Origin.
The San Francisco-based company indicated it plans to use the money to build out its robot fleet, support customer pilots in the U.S. and Europe and expand its platform beyond wall finishing. Origin said pilots are planned with two large U.S. drywall finishing contractors, with additional work scheduled in Germany, Sweden, France and Saudi Arabia.
The company noted the construction industry facing persistent labor shortages and cited a 2026 survey that found worker shortages delayed projects for 42% of responding U.S. construction firms. Co-founder and CEO Yogesh Ghaturle said Origin’s customers are dealing with project backlogs that exceed what their existing crews can handle, largely because of shortages of skilled workers. “They’re leaving revenue on the table because they don’t have enough skilled people, and demand is only growing,” he said.
Construction automation has historically focused on heavy exterior work, while much of the skilled labor inside buildings remains manual and accounts for more than 65% of project timelines, according to Ghaturle.
“We started Origin to bring physical AI to interior trades,” he said. “Wall finishing and painting are only our starting trades; our ambition is to automate the full range of interior trades so contractors can build faster with consistent quality.”
OG-1 Robot
Origin’s flagship OG-1 robot is designed for interior construction and currently handles wall-finishing work such as applying compound, sanding and priming. The company said the robot can also work on corners, pillars, soffits and edges, operate at heights of up to 14 feet and use force control for contact-heavy tasks such as sanding. Origin plans to expand OG-1 into areas including taping, drywall installation, drilling and conduit installation while targeting 150 deployed robots by the end of 2027.
The robot uses a three-wheeled mobile base, 360-degree sensing and interchangeable tools. Origin said the modular design is intended to support additional interior construction tasks without requiring a new robot platform.
Construction Action Model
OG-1 runs on Origin’s Construction Action Model, which the company describes as a foundation model built for construction. It combines three main components:
- Reasoning: Plans and organizes construction tasks into smaller steps.
- Action policy: Handles navigation, identifies where work is needed, selects how tools should be used and evaluates the result.
- Control: Converts those decisions into precise robot movements using continuous feedback.
Origin trains the system using simulation and data collected from live job sites. The company said deployment data is then used to improve performance across different tasks and site conditions. Origin also said its robots are working at three times human speed while maintaining human-level finishing quality, based on its own deployments.
Origin deployed its first robots on New York job sites within 10 months of its founding and said OG-1 is now being used across commercial buildings, multifamily housing, data centers, hotels and warehouses. Human crews continue to handle tasks including site mapping and material replenishment.
Founded in early 2025 by Ghaturle, Ashish Daga and Tushar Makkar, Origin spent about 18 months developing and testing its systems before emerging from stealth. Ghaturle previously founded Perpule, which Amazon acquired in 2021, while Makkar previously worked at Eightfold AI and Daga at Morphle Labs.
