Belidor
Entrepreneur First '24Paris, FR · Founded 2024 · 2 known investors
Belidor builds AI software for the construction industry, beginning with bid leveling and bid management tools for U.S. preconstruction teams. The stated longer-term goal is a broader intelligence layer covering design and construction workflows.
Also known as Belidor AI
Founders & leadership
Belidor was founded in 2024 by Marc Apicella and Baptiste Grandclerc.
Investors · 2
Company profile
researched Aug 2026Belidor develops AI software for the preconstruction stage of building projects, beginning with bid leveling for U.S. general contractors. Its first product ingests subcontractor bids from unstructured sources — PDFs, spreadsheets, emails and even text-message threads — then extracts line items, aligns scopes across bidders, flags scope gaps and inclusions/exclusions, and surfaces best-value options, with each conclusion linked back to the underlying source document. The company frames the product as augmenting estimators rather than replacing them, shifting their time from manual data entry toward negotiation and judgment. Investor materials cite that estimators at large general contractors spend roughly 25% of their time on this rote comparison and re-keying work.
The company positions bid leveling as a wedge into a larger dataset opportunity: bid-level pricing, scopes and subcontractor details that today sit on individual desktops, in disconnected Excel files and in email threads, and that no incumbent software vendor holds in structured form. Belidor's stated roadmap on top of that normalized dataset includes automated scope generation and bid package assembly from plans, subcontractor matching based on responsiveness and past performance, automated takeoffs, and market pricing intelligence and benchmarking across regions and trades. Longer term the company describes an "intelligence layer for the built world" extending upstream into constructability- and cost-optimized design and downstream into procurement of materials.
Belidor is named after Bernard Forest de Bélidor, an 18th-century engineer. It is an Entrepreneurs First portfolio company and operates with a technical team in Paris serving customers in the United States.
Founding story
Belidor was named after Bernard Forest de Bélidor, the 18th-century engineer credited with helping turn engineering from art into science, a reference the company uses to describe applying similar rigor to construction. Its two founders are described as having backgrounds in AI product and B2B go-to-market at Google DeepMind (including scaling a B2B business from $0 to $10M ARR) and as a lead data scientist at BCG X building production AI for industrial clients.
Business model
B2B software sold to general contractors' preconstruction and estimating teams. Job postings describe customer onboarding, account management and expansion of usage within existing accounts, and reference design partners under live pilots with data-sharing agreements; specific pricing terms are not disclosed in the sources.
Not disclosed in the available sources beyond references to customer subscriptions/accounts in hiring materials.
Traction
Reported multiple design partners with live pilots and data-sharing agreements, a stated U.S. pipeline, and ongoing onsite work with general contractors as of late 2025. A third-party profile lists the company at 2-10 employees. No revenue, customer counts or usage metrics are disclosed in the sources.
Latest developments
October 2025: $3.1M pre-seed announced from Angular Ventures and Max Ventures, with funds directed at product development, hiring and market expansion; concurrent hiring for founding AI engineering and construction-domain roles.
▸Full profile — market position, technology, go-to-market, geography, history, risks & controversies
Market position
An early-stage entrant in construction technology focused specifically on preconstruction bid leveling. Angular Ventures argues that despite substantial prior investment in construction software, no vendor had automated bid leveling in a way estimators trust, and that incumbents lack structured access to bid-level data. Belidor's investors describe the addressable industry as a $12 trillion sector. No named competitors appear in the sources.
Emphasis on fitting existing estimator workflows and tools to enable bottom-up adoption instead of requiring a new top-down platform; traceability of every AI conclusion back to the source document; and accumulation of a normalized bid dataset intended to enable downstream products such as scope generation, subcontractor matching, takeoffs and pricing benchmarks.
Technology
LLM-based document processing and agentic pipelines applied to unstructured, domain-specific construction data such as plans, bids and specification sheets. Described capabilities include structured extraction, retrieval-augmented generation, agents, scope interpretation, discrepancy detection in real time, and validation pipelines emphasizing explainability, traceability and reliability, with outputs traceable to source documents.
Go-to-market
Bottom-up adoption by individual estimators rather than top-down platform rollouts, with the product designed to mirror existing estimator workflows and fit the tools construction firms already use. The founders conduct onsite sessions with general contractors in the U.S., work with design partners on live pilots, and plan attendance at industry events and conferences. The company was hiring a former estimator as a construction technologist to run demos and business development "estimator-to-estimator."
Preconstruction and estimating teams at U.S. general contractors, including large GCs, across project types such as commercial, infrastructure and healthcare.
Geography
Technical team based in Paris, France (offices at La Maison), with customers and commercial roles targeted in the United States, where a remote construction technologist role was advertised with a New York or East Coast preference.
History
The company announced a $3.1M pre-seed financing from Angular Ventures and Max Ventures in October 2025 (Angular's public announcement is dated 2025-10-28; Nordic9 records the deal on 2025-10-08). Around the same period it began recruiting a Paris-based founding AI engineer and a US-based construction technologist, and reported multiple design partners running live pilots.
Risks & controversies
No controversies, litigation or negative reporting appear in the available sources. General risk factors evident from the material include very early stage (pre-seed, 2-10 employees), no disclosed revenue or named customers, dependence on a small number of design partners, a split Paris-engineering/U.S.-market operating model, and the need to earn estimator trust in an industry the investors describe as having resisted prior automation attempts.
Compiled by commissioned research from 8 cited public sources — announcements, filings, and press listed under research sources below.
Key figures
latest reportedCompany-reported or press-reported figures, each dated to when it was claimed — not independently audited.
Timeline · 2
launches, deals, and filingsBelidor posted a Founding AI Engineer role based in Paris (in-person at La Maison) and a US-remote Construction Technologist role targeting estimators with preconstruction experience at US general contractors, indicating team expansion after the pre-seed round.
Belidor announced a $3.1M pre-seed round from Angular Ventures and Max Ventures. Angular Ventures publicly announced the investment on 2025-10-28; Nordic9 dates the financing 2025-10-08. Proceeds are earmarked for product development, hiring and market expansion.
$3.1M source ↗
Dated company events from announcements, filings, and press; legal rows summarize public dockets and regulator releases.
▸Research sources · 8
primary sources listed
- Belidor: the intelligence layer for construction - The Anglenewsletter.angularventures.com · web
8 public sources were cited for this profile; the first-party ones are listed here.
Frequently asked questions
- What does Belidor do?
- Paris-based AI startup building bid-leveling and preconstruction decision software for U.S. general contractors.
- Who founded Belidor?
- Belidor was founded by Marc Apicella, Baptiste Grandclerc in 2024.
- Who are Belidor's investors?
- Belidor's investors include Angular Ventures, Entrepreneur First.
- Where is Belidor headquartered?
- Belidor is headquartered in Paris, FR.