Autonomous vehicles have spent years fighting for their place in the real world...
Companies like Waymo, owned by Google parent Alphabet (GOOGL), have begun rolling out robotaxis in a handful of cities.
Even food-delivery apps like DoorDash (DASH) are experimenting with delivery robots.
But the potential for self-operating vehicles isn't limited to the roads...
In agriculture, this same tech is already taking over. Autonomous tractors and robotic weeders are using specialized sensors to plant seeds with centimeter-level precision. They're also helping apply fertilizers more efficiently.
And then there's Bedrock Robotics. The young startup is taking the tech used in robotaxis... and bolting it onto excavators and other heavy equipment.
Bedrock just raised $270 million at a $1.75 billion valuation, led by Alphabet's CapitalG. Nvidia's (NVDA) venture arm and plenty of others joined in.
The company claims it can retrofit existing machines with automated capabilities. And this reuse of automated technology could be a game changer for one industry in particular... construction.
Human labor is a major construction bottleneck...
Even when a project has all the proper funding and permits, progress still hinges on the workers.
And this dependency is becoming an increasing issue. Bedrock points to industry forecasts as proof. The U.S. construction sector needs an estimated 350,000 additional workers in 2026 to keep up with demand. That number is expected to reach about 450,000 next year.
Contractors are already stretched thin. Between an aging workforce, high turnover, and even higher demand, tight labor pools have made it tougher to staff job sites consistently.
Autonomous machinery could be the solution to this problem. For instance, if one person can supervise an excavator as it does repeatable work on its own... a crew's productive capacity rises without adding headcount.
If a machine can keep moving material throughout the evening, projects can get done faster.
And if machine operation becomes a 24-hour setup, construction stops being a daytime-only business.
Speed is crucial to today's construction industry...
Regular readers know all about today's massive demand for construction. The "big five" data-center operators alone plan to spend more than $600 billion this year.
In other words, construction companies have plenty of business... as long as they have enough people and machines to do the work.
Just look at specialty contractor APi Group (APG). While companies like Bedrock handle the first phase of a project, APi is often the last crew on the job site.
APi specializes in the systems that make buildings usable and safe. Think fire protection, alarms, and heating, ventilation, and air conditioning ("HVAC").
These systems are some of the last installations in a project. And that's where delays tend to be most expensive – right at the end of the construction timeline.
Autonomy can help the early-stage construction work move faster. And that helps APi move faster, too.
Management has already nodded at the boost its projects could get from AI. The company has more than $4 billion of projects in its backlog, and this could be what helps it clear that faster.
And yet, investors don't seem to be paying attention...
We can see this through our Embedded Expectations Analysis ("EEA") framework.
The EEA works a lot like a betting line in a sports bet... We use APi's current share price to calculate what investors expect from future performance and compare those forecasts with our own.
It tells us how well our "team" (the company) has to perform to justify the market's "bet" (the current price).
Uniform return on assets ("ROA") is up from its 13% pandemic low to an impressive 31%.
Most of this uptrend is thanks to insatiable demand for new buildings, driven by data-center projects.
But investors think that's where the gains will end. They expect Uniform ROA to sit at just 34% by 2029... barely an improvement from today's levels.
Automation in construction is making projects far more efficient. APi will be able to complete more projects, too. And returns should reflect that improvement.
This construction timeline shift will happen fast...
As we mentioned, Bedrock's technology can be installed on existing machinery. Contractors don't need a new fleet of equipment
We expect tech like this to raise the ceiling for the entire construction and engineering industry.
Machines will help speed these projects along... without the need for tough-to-find skilled workers. That's great for profitability. And it's why specialty-contractor stocks like APi are set to boom.
Regards,
Joel Litman
March 6, 2026
