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SoftBank is well known for its interest in making big bets. And the latest to take a cut of SoftBank’s $100 billion hoard is California-based . According to its 附近上门 profile, the startup, founded in 2015, optimizes “every aspect of building development, design, and construction.”

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Since its inception, Katerra has attracted large sums of money. As part of its Series A, the company raised a hefty $75.3 million. A year later, Katerra announced a led by , with , , , and. However, the startup’s SoftBank-led $865 million Series D dwarfs previous sums raised, and sets the value of the company, according to co-founder Michael Marks, at $3 billion. It is also, so far, the largest venture deal of 2018.

Who Needs An Infrastructure Bill When You Have SoftBank?

However, while Katerra is notable for its massive new funding round, it’s not the only startup in the construction and building space to garner interest from investors. , for instance, raised $100 million in 2017 for its intelligent architectural glass.

Regarding interest from investors in the space, Augury founder told 附近上门 News more about the smart building sector in early 2017:

鈥淭here鈥檚 been an uptick in interest from investors, as well as in the number of competitors. We were pulled into the fundraising process earlier than we expected because all of the large financial firms in the Valley started asking questions about this market,鈥� he said. 鈥淏ut at the same time, most of their feedback was that this market is still young and playing out. A lot of them don鈥檛 have a thesis yet and are not necessarily ready to place a bet on it.鈥�

Whether SoftBank’s investment definitively shows a maturation in the construction startup market and its adjacent sectors is not clear. But, at least for SoftBank, it’s not the first large deal in infrastructure-like projects. The company’s vision fund, which has $100 billion to offer up to startups, has dedicated 15 percent of its investment fund to funding Saudi Arabia’s solar energy ambitions, as Jason Rowley. In the same report, SoftBank, the parent company, also invested an additional $15 billion in, Saudi Arabia’s ambitious city-building project.

How SoftBank the parent company and its Vision Fund operate together is not known. However, Katerra would be well situated to take advantage of the relationship, assuming one exists at all. After all, building a whole new city will require a few bricks.

SoftBank’s Vision Fund has also made significant bets on other infrastructure projects. In a private equity deal, , according to 附近上门, raised $1.2 billion from SoftBank in a private equity deal. The company aims to “provide global high-speed, low latency broadband access” via satellites. Its ambitions here are reminiscent of the broadband build out of the 90s.

The world鈥檚 largest investment fund has also placed big bets on agriculture. In July of 2017, the Vision Fund led a $200 million Series B round in . The SF-based startup intends to lead the way on indoor farming, growing food without the use of pesticides. It鈥檚 a space that has massive potential, given that much of the world鈥檚 .

Overall, SoftBank, when it decides to deploy money, isn鈥檛 shy about investing a hell of a lot of it. And as pointed in a 附近上门 News overview of the fund, this is not surprising. If the Vision Fund intends to make massive returns, it needs to make massive bets鈥攏ecessarily precluding it from bothering with seed and early-stage startups. And as pointed out in 附近上门 News鈥檚 prior coverage of the SoftBank Vision fund, 鈥渆ven if the global venture capital and private equity markets continue to recover from their mid-2016 lows, and there are more of these quarter-billion-plus rounds, it鈥檚 still going to be difficult to invest that capital judiciously.鈥�

That leaves Softbank looking to invest in startups that operate in traditionally capital-intensive sectors such as construction, agriculture, and energy. Katerra is the latest example of that.

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