Prefab home builder Veev reportedly shutting down after reaching unicorn status last year
Veev, a real estate developer turned tech-enabled homebuilder, is on the verge of shutting down after reaching unicorn status last year, according to multiple reports.
Calcalist reported on Sunday that the company — which raised $600 million in total, $400 million of which was secured in March of 2022 — has to shut down after an “abrupt cancellation of a capital-raising initiative.”
Bond led Veev’s 2022 round, which also included participation from LenX (formerly Lennar Ventures), Zeev Ventures, Fifth Wall Climate Tech and JLL Spark Global Ventures.
TechCrunch has reached out to Veev for comment but had not heard back as of press time.
Founded in 2008, Veev Group started its life as a traditional real estate developer and asset manager. During its time developing properties, it found new ways to improve the building process, according to CEO and co-founder Amit Haller. In 2017, Veev Group began to focus on prefabrication capabilities, and by 2018 it formally pivoted to what it described as “a vertically integrated developer focused on building innovation.” In 2019, the company name changed from Dragonfly Group to Veev.
Ironically, when TechCrunch spoke to the company in March of 2022, executives appeared undeterred by the demise of Katerra, a SoftBank-backed construction tech startup that essentially crashed and burned in 2021 after raising over $2 billion in funding. Haller said at the time that Katerra had posed itself “as a full-stack supply chain company, adopting prefab construction tech to further its efforts.”
He added: “Veev’s taken a different approach, where the product — the home — came first. And the next stage for the company has been to scale by replicating the success of its Digital Fab near regional demand.”
In November of 2022, Calcalist also reported that Veev had laid off around 100 employees, or about 30% of its workforce. At that time, the company reportedly had around 350 workers, including 100 in Israel.
It’s not the first startup failure for Veev co-founders Heller and Ami Avrahami. Another one of their proptech ventures, Reali, began a shutdown in August of 2022 after raising more than $290 million in debt and equity funding. Zeev Ventures was also an investor in that company.
