Drive the arc from North Austin out to Taylor and back into the city this year and you’ll pass three job sites that don’t look unusual until you count the people. Site excavation for a new Starbucks in North Austin, partnering with Starbucks, Reger Holdings, Flintrock Commercial and Thomas Randolph Excavation. Site preparation and building pads in Taylor for the Zachary Cole Foundation, a nonprofit supporting young adult athletes in their fight against leukemia, for a retreat center serving recovering patients and their families. And in Austin, demolition and site grading of a two-story building, the machines running grapple-claw and hydraulic-hammer attachments. Standard iron, tight cuts, and skeleton crews, because the fleet is orchestrated from Mission Control.
In 2024, two SpaceX engineers did something construction startups had mostly avoided: they became a contractor. TerraFirma bids the job, owns the schedule, and eats the risk. Its Mission Planner software simulates the work before mobilization; Mission Control supervises execution; retrofitted semi-autonomous machines put blade to dirt. Customers named in public reporting include Starbucks, Flintrock Commercial, Reger Holdings and the Zachary Cole Foundation, plus mission-critical infrastructure and logistics work with the U.S. government in environments most contractors won’t touch.
The proof arrived in July 2026: $115 million in funding, anchored by a $100 million Series A led by Kleiner Perkins, with Bain Capital Ventures, Glade Brook, BANNER VC, Saga, Trust Ventures, Definition, PEAK6, Magnetar and Ravelin participating, and angels from SpaceX, Anduril, Base Power, Shinkei and Hadrian. Nobody writes that check for a demo reel. The full accounting lands the way TerraFirma likes it: in cubic yards, on schedule.