Here's your Forbes Daily Briefing for Monday, July 21st. Today on Forbes, Waymo vets are

automating construction sites with self-driving dirt diggers. A team of engineers from

self-driving robotaxi leader Waymo is eyeing another huge market to automate, construction equipment.

Last year, Boris Softman, previously a star engineer at Robotaxy Leader Waymo, where he worked

to automate trucks, teamed up with former Waymo colleagues A.J. Gamala and Kevin Peterson,

along with engineer Tom Elias, to start bedrock robotics.

They're starting with excavators, the ubiquitous machines that do the heavy digging.

The San Francisco-based startup isn't designing its own line of construction machinery,

but instead plans to modify existing equipment with cameras, LIDAR, computers, and AI software that enables

them to work around the clock, including in blistering heat when human workers would need

regular brakes.

Bedrock, which is also brought on former Uber Freight EVP Loran Autofaeo as COO, is emerging

from stealth with $80 million in new funding and plans to

begin commercial operations in 2026. Softman, the company's CEO, who has a PhD in robotics from

Carnegie Mellon University, told Forbes that Waymo's success with Robotaxis shows, quote,

the state of technology just being right, where we're seeing it work on one of the

hardest applications in the world. That's exactly the type of building block that catalyzes

change. When you tally up all the ways we use these specialized heavy machines, it's another

one of those transportation-style spaces that is due for a wave of what's happening

in transportation.

It's a tricky time for the massive U.S. construction industry.

There's huge demand for new housing, data centers, and factories, but the Trump administration's

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