Company · Construction Robotics · New York
Toggle Robotics
Industrial robots, computer vision and software built for the steel skeleton inside every bridge, tower and tunnel - starting with the most manual job on the jobsite.
Industrial robots, computer vision and software built for the steel skeleton inside every bridge, tower and tunnel - starting with the most manual job on the jobsite.
Rebar is the steel reinforcement hidden inside nearly every serious piece of construction - highways, foundations, high-rises, tunnels. For a century it has been cut, bent and tied together largely by hand, by workers bent over steel mats in heat and dust. Toggle Robotics, founded in New York in 2016 by Daniel Blank and Ian Cohen, looked at that and asked a plain question: why is a robot not doing this yet?
The answer the company arrived at was not simply "build a stronger robot." It was to build the software that tells the robot what to do. Toggle assembled a full-stack system - robotic hardware paired with its own Toggle OS software - that converts construction drawings directly into automated manufacturing programs. A blueprint becomes machine motion without a human in the middle translating it. That single move is why, as CEO Daniel Blank has noted, construction firms started calling the startup directly rather than waiting on their vendors.
"The problem of labor cost, availability and speed is really at the forefront for construction firms - and they are going directly to the tech startups to access solutions."
— Daniel Blank, CEO & Co-FounderFigures per company statements and reporting from Construction Dive and TechCrunch. Productivity and labor-cost figures are company-reported and approximate.
Construction runs on a labor market that keeps tightening. Skilled workers are scarce, costs rise, and rebar assembly - repetitive, heavy and hazardous - is exactly the kind of task that is hard to staff and easy to get wrong. Errors caught late are expensive; injuries are worse.
Toggle moves the work off the jobsite into a controlled setting. Industrial robots handle and manipulate the steel; workers do the final wire tying in a cooperative process. Finished assemblies ship by truck to the project - close enough to keep offsite prefabrication local.
Robots cut, bend, place and assist in assembling rebar cages and mats in a factory, before the parts ever reach the site.
Converts construction drawings directly into automated robotic manufacturing programs - blueprint to machine motion, no manual translation.
Inline modules confirm feature presence, location and dimensions with pass/fail output, using structured-light 3D sensing and computer vision.
Quickly recalibrates lines for new material loads and maps intersections in complex assemblies for robotic welding and tying.
Toggle QC represents the company's extension from assembly into inline inspection - catching defects before parts leave the floor. Sources: toggle.is, company Medium.
Toggle's cap table is unusually cross-sector: a quant fund, construction-focused VCs, a celebrity investor and a Japanese construction giant all agreeing the problem is real.
Backers include: Point72 Ventures, Tribeca Venture Partners, Blackhorn Ventures, New York State, Twenty Seven Ventures, Mark Cuban and Tokyu Construction (2023 extension).
Daniel Blank and Ian Cohen start Toggle in New York to bring digital fabrication to construction.
Toggle unveils its cooperative robotic assembly system and raises a $3M seed led by Point72 Ventures, with Mark Cuban participating.
Tribeca Venture Partners leads an $8M round with Blackhorn Ventures, Point72 and New York State.
A $3M extension adds Japanese investor Tokyu Construction; the team plans to double headcount.
Inline quality control arrives, using structured-light scanning and computer vision, run from New York and Zurich.
Construction is a multi-trillion-dollar industry that still runs largely on paper and muscle, which has drawn a wave of robotics entrants. Peers such as Advanced Construction Robotics (TyBot), SkyMul and Built Robotics tackle adjacent problems on or above the jobsite. Toggle's distinguishing bet is to own the whole stack - hardware, the Toggle OS software layer and pre-assembly services through its sister operation, Toggle Construction - and to pull the work offsite into a controlled factory rather than automating in place.
That vertical integration is also what made the pivot into Toggle QC logical rather than jarring. The same insight that powered assembly - know exactly where every feature of a part should be - becomes an inspection product when you point the sensors at finished work. The alternative for most fabricators remains manual crews and a metrology lab; Toggle's answer is to verify inline, before parts ship.
"Toggle QC scans production parts inline and confirms the right features ended up in the right place."
— ToggleCEO & Co-Founder
Leads Toggle's strategy and its case that construction firms will increasingly source technology directly from startups as labor pressures mount.
Co-Founder
Co-founded Toggle in 2016 with a shared conviction that digital fabrication belongs in heavy construction, not just consumer manufacturing.
It uses industrial robots, computer vision and software to pre-assemble and inspect steel rebar and other fabricated construction parts, moving hazardous manual work off the jobsite into a controlled factory.
Daniel Blank (CEO) and Ian Cohen founded the company in 2016; it is headquartered in New York City, with operations extending to Zurich.
About $15M total - a $3M seed (2019), an $8M Series A (2021) and a $3M Series A extension (2023) - from investors including Point72, Tribeca Venture Partners, Blackhorn Ventures, Mark Cuban and Tokyu Construction.
Software that converts construction drawings directly into automated robotic manufacturing programs, so a blueprint becomes robot motion without manual translation.
An inline quality-control product that scans fabricated parts during production using structured-light 3D scanning and computer vision to confirm critical features are correct before parts ship.
Sources: toggle.is, TechCrunch, Construction Dive, The Architect's Newspaper, company Medium, LinkedIn. Some financial and productivity figures are company-reported and approximate.