BlackRock, Baillie Gifford Back Icon's $200 Million 3D-Printed Home Push

Icon Closes $200 Million Series D

Austin-based Icon, one of the biggest players in 3D printed real estate, announced a $200 million Series D financing round co-led by Baillie Gifford and funds managed by BlackRock, among others. The new capital brings the company's total funding to $700 million and values Icon at $1.4 billion.

The raise follows the commercial launch of Icon's Titan multi-story robotic 3D construction system in March. Previous Icon technology could build only single-story structures, while the Titan cuts the average time to build a home by six weeks, reduces the number of workers needed and lowers overall costs by 40%, according to the company.

Scaling Titan Across the U.S.

Icon co-founder and CEO Jason Ballard said the company sought investors with experience taking physical companies from early proof points to scale, pointing to Baillie Gifford's work with Nvidia, Tesla and SpaceX, and BlackRock's massive real estate portfolio. Luke Ward, private companies investment manager at Baillie Gifford, said Icon's construction system works with, rather than against, the business realities that shape a project's success.

The funds will be used to scale the Titan and advance new technologies, as well as broaden Icon's footprint in Texas, Florida and Washington, D.C., and bring the company to new markets across the U.S. Icon previously used its printers on its own projects, including a fully 3D printed community outside Austin built with Lennar. It is now selling its technology to other builders, with special financing help from Wells Fargo, which is also offering incentives to home buyers. Ballard said Icon has roughly 10 times the paid reservations it forecast needing for next year, with demand coming from both large publicly traded builders and smaller private firms.

Growth and Space Ambitions

Ballard said the eight-year-old company is on pace to see four times revenue growth this year and predicts it will at least double that next year based on its current pipeline, while seeing a potential IPO in the future. Icon's goals are to build homes faster, more affordably and more sustainably.

Icon is also working with the U.S. military and NASA. The company says it was awarded more than $370 million in government contracts to advance Project Olympus, which is developing construction systems to build on the moon. Ballard said the company expects announcements in the back half of this year from NASA about the moon base and that it will stay in lockstep with the agency.

Sources: CNBC · Icon · Axios