Uber Founder Backs 3D-Printed Hotel Start-Up
A hotel company using 3D printing to manufacture modular buildings has raised $20 million from a cabal of investors, including Uber co-founder Travis Kalanick, dating app Tinder co-founder Justin Mateen, and the Indian ad-tech billionaire Div Turakhia.
The company, called Habitas, manufactures its hotel rooms in Mexico before shipping them off around the world, where they are fitted into the local landscape, limiting construction time to six to nine months. This earns Habitas a return on investment within two years, a fact that co-founder Oliver Ripley told the Financial Times is, “unheard of for traditional hotels.”
Habitas will use its fresh $20 million to expand to new markets in Asia, the Middle East, and Africa.
“We assemble them like Lego,” Oliver Ripley states. The company will have around eight locations by the end of 2020 and aims to build 10 to 12 a year afterward.
With rooms costing $200-$400 a night, Habitas is pitched between traditional hostels and five-star hotels, aimed at millennial tourists looking for a social holiday rather than a fancy lobby.
Feb. 10, 2020