Walk any factory floor and you'll eventually find a control panel. It's the gray steel box in the corner that nobody talks about. It’s the one that tells the conveyor when to run, the pump when to stop, and the robotic cell how to move safely. Control panels sit on the critical path of virtually every automation project. When one is late or wrong, machine assembly stalls, installation gets pushed, and commissioning timelines slip. Entire projects pause for a box.
And yet, for such a critical product, the way control panels are designed and built has barely changed in decades. Customers send PDFs, CAD files, and requirements over email. Engineers translate those requirements into schematics line by line. Skilled technicians read drawings, cut wire, mount components, and assemble panels by hand. This process can take months and is dependent on institutional knowledge, knowledge that is aging out of the industry at exactly the moment demand is accelerating.
Our industrial acceleration shows up in the data. Manufacturing construction in the US has grown roughly 3x since 2020. The largest industrial OEMs and component suppliers in the world are reporting record backlogs and multi-year project pipelines. The build out of manufacturing and data centers is driving a generational wave of investment in automation infrastructure, and the craftsman-based supply chain behind industrial control panels was not built to absorb it.
That’s why we’re thrilled to announce that Construct has led Podium Automation’s $18M Series A, with participation from Andreessen Horowitz, Transition Ventures, Sunflower Capital, and Banter Capital.
Podium is rebuilding the control panel manufacturer, designing and building panels at the speed and efficiency that the market demands. The insight behind Podium is that the bottleneck in panel production isn't the physical build but rather everything before it. Quoting, compliance logic, component selection, wire sizing, layout constraints, build instructions. Traditional shops spend the majority of their time and cost on engineering steps that happen before anyone picks up a wire. Podium turns those steps into software, and pairs it with automation on the backend to create a repeatable, scalable production system.
This matters because control panels are custom, but not infinitely custom. They are highly engineered products built from standardized blocks. If you can capture the right requirements, encode the right rules, and connect design directly to production, you can deliver something that feels custom to the customer but scales much more like software enabled manufacturing.
The result is a step change in speed, quality, and visibility. Traditional panel shops often quote in weeks, design in weeks, and build over months. Podium is moving toward instant quoting, design in days, and delivery in weeks or less. More importantly, the same software that accelerates the process also reduces rework, improves compliance, and gives customers a far more transparent experience from first quote to final delivery.
Since launching, Podium has executed with unusual speed and efficiency. The team launched its Brooklyn V1 factory in August 2025, and is already working with industrial giants and Fortune 500 companies.
At Construct, we back founders who have lived the problems they’re solving. CEO Jamie Niu and CTO Jacob Buser have been on the other side of the panel procurement process. Jamie spent her career as an operator in high-growth industrial companies like Tesla, Blue Origin, and Bowery Farming. Jacob has spent his career designing and deploying automation systems. He led systems engineering at Bowery Farming and built automation systems at Turbofill. Podium is the vendor they always wished existed.
Jamie and Jacob are a rare blend of lived operational and technical experience, and we’re excited to support them in building a new foundation for the next generation of industrial automation.
The American factory floor is being rebuilt. Podium is changing how it gets wired.