Tendos Raises €12 Million to Bring A.I. to Building Materials Makers

Trending Topics auf Google als bevorzugte Nachrichtenquelle festlegen.

Less typing, more orders: The Munich start-up Tendos has just closed a €12 million seed round to free building materials manufacturers from tedious sales work with A.I. agents. The round was led by the U.S. investor Insight Partners, Tendos said. The founders of four unicorns, Personio, Forto, Flix and SumUp, also took part, along with other founders and industry figures such as Stephan Tahy, the former chief executive of Duravit.

A.I. Agents for the Sales Back Office

Building materials manufacturers often win or lose orders based on how quickly they respond to requests. Every day, sales teams receive tenders, bills of quantities and customer emails that have to be read, matched against thousands of products and turned into quotes. According to Tendos, much of that work is still done by hand, copying data between inboxes, tender portals, CRM and ERP systems.

At Tendos, specialized A.I. agents take over exactly that work:

• Tenders: The platform finds relevant public and private tenders.
• Requests: It reads incoming emails and documents, such as bills of quantities in the construction industry’s GAEB format.
• Product matching: Requirements are automatically matched to the manufacturer’s product catalog, for example the right radiator by type, size and valve side.
• Quotes and orders: Tendos drafts quotes and processes orders directly in existing CRM and ERP systems.

When something is unclear, for instance when a bill of quantities contains contradictory material specifications, employees make the call. The platform learns from those decisions for future quotes.

Wilo, Grundfos and Hansgrohe as Customers

According to Tendos, its customers include billion-euro manufacturers in heating, plumbing, ventilation and building technology, among them Wilo, Grundfos, Hansgrohe, Spelsberg, KSB and Kermi. Quotes with a combined value in the tens of billions of euros have already been processed on the platform, the company said. The start-up did not disclose revenue.

“The building materials industry is one of the largest and least digitized markets in Europe. Its sales teams are highly qualified but are drowning in paperwork and repetitive tasks,” said Christian Sedlmeier, the chief executive. Teddie Wardi, a managing director at Insight Partners, said the building materials industry and manufacturing as a whole had so far been largely untouched by the first wave of A.I. companies. Insight Partners is also an investor in the Swedish legal A.I. start-up Legora.

Three Founders With Mittelstand Experience

Tendos was founded by three people with backgrounds in sales, software and product management. Mr. Sedlmeier previously worked as a product manager at the Munich process mining unicorn Celonis and was chief executive of ivy GmbH. Matthias Hilscher, the chief technology officer, was also C.T.O. at ivy and previously worked as a developer at AutoScout24, ProSieben and BCG Digital Ventures. Daniel Kappler, the chief product officer, was head of product at TradeLink and was responsible for a construction tender platform at IBM.

Tendos plans to use the new money to expand internationally beyond Germany, Austria and Switzerland, add use cases in sales and beyond, and cover additional segments of the building materials value chain.

The Competition

Tendos is not the only start-up applying A.I. to construction. The Vienna-based start-up reebuild recently raised €3 million to take paperwork off construction companies’ hands, and the Tyrolean start-up revitalyze uses A.I. to check tenders. Large software companies are also upgrading their CRM and ERP systems with A.I. agents of their own, alongside general-purpose quoting and sales tools. Tendos, by contrast, is betting fully on specializing in building materials manufacturers and their product catalogs.