Casa Grande, Arizona — Going into late 2024, the air around Mountain View Estates hummed with the sound of transformation.

Just steps away from where Diamond Age’s towering gantry systems had once 3D-printed concrete homes, a flatbed truck unloaded light gauge steel (LGS) wall panels. These panels—lighter, faster to assemble, and more economical—represented Diamond Age’s last-ditch effort to pivot from 3D printing to a more scalable, capital-light model for modernizing homebuilding. Despite the company’s determination and rapid innovation, this new vision proved insufficient to save the firm.

Ben Horowitz once said:

Every company that failed at some point had the opportunity to pivot to something that worked.”

This adage perfectly encapsulated the race Diamond Age, a Phoenix-based construction technology start-up, ran for its life as a homebuilding innovator. Ultimately, Diamond Age's pivot proved too little too late.

Reflecting on the broader challenges construction technology startups face, the CEO of a significant privately-held regional homebuilding company shared a candid perspective: For decades, each market cycle seems to bring a wave of tech-driven companies aiming to revolutionize homebuilding. They often develop prototypes and secure projects in a few neighborhoods where strong margins can offset costs but ultimately shut down when market corrections force a focus on cost-cutting and reducing fixed expenses.

Tight margins and slower sales are the death of r&d and vanity projects," he said.

This cyclical reality underscores the challenges Diamond Age faced as it worked to transform single-family homebuilding through robotics, automation, and AI-driven processes. On December 12, 2024, the founders confirmed what had been feared for weeks: Diamond Age had ceased operations and was entering bankruptcy.

The LGS panelized wall product showed great promise; we just simply ran out of time,” Jack Oslan wrote. “Unfortunately for us and many other startups, if you’re not in the AI space currently, funding opportunities are harder to come by.”

The Diamond Age Pivot: A Race Against Time

Diamond Age’s original vision centered on its proprietary 3D printing gantry systems, which debuted at Century Communities’ Mountain View Estates project. Between 2022 and early 2024, the company used these gantries to 3D print 30 homes, including two hybrid models featuring 3D-printed exterior walls and LGS interiors, as part of a planned transition to its new construction method.

In March 2024, Diamond Age dismantled its field-based 3D printing operation, transporting its four gantry systems back to Phoenix over two weeks. By July, the company had retooled its factory to produce LGS panels, leveraging a proprietary Manufacturing Execution System (MES) to optimize production. The pivot was swift, efficient, and promising: the new LGS system enabled a six-person crew to assemble a 2,000-square-foot home in a single day, cutting weeks off traditional build timelines.

Despite these operational successes, the pivot came with financial strain. As Oslan noted,

If we’d had this idea from the beginning, we would have raised a fraction of the capital and avoided the valuation hole we’re in now.”

The Financial Pressures Behind the Pivot

The harsh realities of a changing financial landscape drove the Diamond Age’s pivot to LGS construction. The Federal Reserve’s aggressive interest rate hikes in 2022 and 2023, coupled with the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank in early 2023, had already begun to chill venture capital investment in the construction tech sector. By 2024, this capital crunch reached crisis levels, as highlighted by a TechMonitor report showing a 58% surge in U.S. startup failures during Q1 2024 alone.

The pivot to the light gauge steel (LGS) system seemed promising, but the broader funding environment quickly overshadowed Diamond Age’s operational progress. Jack Oslan, in a September 2024 interview, spoke candidly about the capital challenges:

The venture capital community has checked out," Oslan explained. "They’re no longer interested in extending Series A funding—they’re waiting for Series B metrics, which we simply can’t achieve without the resources to scale."

Adding to the perspective, Diamond Age CEO Cole Young underscored the urgency and the company’s belief in its pivot during the same period:

We’ve always cultivated a maker mentality at Diamond Age, and it paid off during the retooling process for the LGS panels,” Young said. “But the capital constraints are real. The LGS product has incredible potential, yet funding opportunities outside the AI space are practically nonexistent right now.”

This alignment of vision between Oslan and Young reflected the company’s determination but also the stark reality: in a “higher-for-longer” interest rate environment, patient investment capital was no longer in ample supply.

A Broader Reckoning for Construction Tech

Diamond Age’s closure is not an isolated incident. The past two years have seen a wave of failures among technology-driven startups, particularly in construction and real estate tech. ICON Technologies, once valued at nearly $2 billion, laid off 25% of its workforce in early 2025 after struggling to scale its 3D printing operations profitably. Similarly, rent-to-own platform Divvy ceased operations in 2024 despite having raised hundreds of millions in funding.

The underlying issue is a structural mismatch between the scale of the housing crisis and the financial realities of the private sector. While startups like Diamond Age aimed to industrialize homebuilding to meet demand, the capital required to achieve meaningful scale often proved prohibitive.

As I wrote about Entekra’s failure in 2023,

Does the investment of money, time, people, and materials necessary to modernize building make sense as a standalone business model without tapping into the multi-layered profit streams of real estate residual values?”

The question now is even more fundamental: who can or will pay for the kind of research and development it will take to truly transform homebuilding's legacy-bound, outdated construction practices?

Not all the easy money in the world, it seems, has been enough so far.

The Final Days of Diamond Age

By late 2024, Diamond Age was still building the final 15 homes at Mountain View Estates and preparing for a new Century Communities project set to begin in November. The market reception to the LGS panels was overwhelmingly positive, but it was not enough to attract the investment needed to keep operations afloat.

The company’s assets, including robotic arms, custom assembly lines, and other industrial equipment, are now up for auction through Silicon Valley Disposition. This mirrors a growing trend of distressed asset sales across the tech sector, with companies like Shapeways and Zeda similarly liquidating equipment in recent months.

Lessons Learned and Industry Implications

Diamond Age’s story underscores the volatility of innovating in the construction industry. While its pivot to LGS construction demonstrated remarkable adaptability and potential, the company ultimately fell victim to the same forces that have claimed dozens of other startups. As Oslan reflected,

The saddest part is the reception from the market was so positive, and not being able to see it through is a tough pill to swallow.”

The closure also raises broader questions about the future of construction tech. With funding increasingly concentrated in AI and other high-growth sectors, the construction industry may struggle to attract the capital needed to modernize. This comes at a time when the need for affordable housing solutions has never been greater.

Diamond Age’s legacy lies in its ambition and the lessons it offers to the industry. The challenge now is for builders, investors, and policymakers to create an ecosystem that supports the innovation needed to address the housing crisis. Without it, more startups will meet the same fate, leaving the industry stuck in its old ways as demand for housing continues to outstrip supply.