ICON

The United States is in the midst of an extreme housing shortage that is not going away anytime soon. A 2021 study estimated that the US was facing an undersupply of 5.5 million homes, and the number of active house listings in the US dramatically decreased from roughly 1.5 million in October 2016 to less than 500K in October 2021. Coupled with continued strong demand for housing, this undersupply is driving up median home prices across the nation, peaking with a 25% increase in median home prices between 2019 and 2021. Meanwhile, US cities of all sizes are building at too slow of a pace to keep up with demand.

ICON is a construction technology company that uses 3D robotics, software, and advanced materials to advance homebuilding capacity. It wants to make houses and other structures that are not only considerably cheaper than conventional methods but also faster to build, more sustainable, more resilient/energy efficient, and built with more design freedom. The company thinks it will be able to achieve these objectives by reducing the high labor and material costs associated with traditional building methods with the use of its efficient, low-waste 3D printers and other technologies.