It was apparently too good to be true. Founded in 2015 as a small design office in Silicon Valley, US company Katerra’s goal was nothing less than the revolution of the entire US construction industry, especially when it comes to office buildings, student dormitories and apartment buildings. The magic words were “mass customization” with modular elements.
For this purpose, the company collected over $2 billion over the past six years – and created over 8,000 jobs worldwide. Just a few months ago, Japanese SoftBank paid Katerra a further €200 million in order to keep the construction start-up from going bankrupt.
Now the company is shutting down, as numerous US media report. Thousands of employees are to be laid off and current construction projects are to be dropped.
In recent years, Katerra took over numerous companies, including Michael Green Architecture (MGA), the architecture office of star architect Michael Green. He told the internet platform archpaper.com that he would take over and continue to run MGA together with Natalie Telewiak.
