Conley Oster

Who they are

Conley Oster is Co-Founder (COO) of Raise Robotics — a Penn State engineer who went from crane rigging and Apple hardware internships to co-founding a construction robotics startup now backed by $20.1M in total funding.

Person

Conley graduated from Penn State with a Bachelor of Engineering in 2018, then took two internships that set the arc: structural certification at Rockwell Collins and DFx engineering at Apple — both on the hardware/manufacturing side. From there he moved into the field: Project Manager at Bigge Crane and Rigging Co., then Technical Sales at ML Crane Group, giving him direct exposure to the jobsite economics and heavy-lift operations that construction robotics has to displace. In October 2021 he co-founded Raise Robotics alongside Gary Chen, with Conley operating as COO. He founded Raise Robotics — a modular, semi-autonomous robotic platform for vertical construction tasks including layout, drilling, and high-precision fastener installation. The through-line is unusually clear: every role before the company was either building physical things or selling and managing the equipment used to build physical things. He posts actively on LinkedIn about perception systems, pilot adoption, AI-driven rework elimination, and workforce readiness — practitioner content, not founder-brand content — and in 2025 he landed on the Forbes 30 Under 30 Manufacturing list and spoke at the HardTechForum New York, the Construction Robotics Summit, and the Internet of Building Things conference.

Company

Raise Robotics closed a $7.8M Seed round on August 5, 2025, bringing total funding to about $20.1M across 4 rounds from 5 investors including Union Labs and Cybernetix. Earlier in 2025, the company deployed Universal Robots cobots with contractor Harmon for high-rise fastener installation — one of its first public pilot deployments showing the platform moving from prototype to jobsite. The company is now focused on expanding from pilot-to-commercial deployments, making strategic hires, and building partnerships to push further into high-rise and facade automation. Gary Chen serves as CEO and Conley Oster as COO, with both founders bringing engineering and construction backgrounds.

Market

Raise Robotics competes in construction automation with a focus on precision vertical-build tasks — a narrower wedge than masonry-focused Construction Robotics or roofing-focused Renovate Robotics, its two most direct named rivals. The broader market tailwind is strong: chronic labor shortages, rising jobsite safety mandates, green construction requirements, and a push to cut rework costs are all driving contractor demand for automation hardware. US-based supply chains for vertical construction are also maturing in ways that favor a domestic robotics company targeting high-rise and facade work.

Network

Conley co-founded Raise Robotics with Gary Chen, who serves as CEO. Beyond that co-founder relationship, no specific network edges are available from the current claims — his conference circuit (HardTechForum NY, Construction Robotics Summit, Internet of Building Things) suggests a growing set of construction-tech and hard-tech operator relationships, but no individual names surface from the data.

How they likely show up

  • Career moved from aerospace internships → crane project management → crane sales → founder — this is someone who learns an industry by doing the operational and commercial work before building the solution, not by pattern-matching from the outside.
  • Active LinkedIn poster on perception systems, pilot adoption, and rework elimination → comfortable translating technical work into operator language; likely favors concrete results over abstract vision.
  • COO role at a hardware startup he co-founded → probably lives in the gap between engineering and go-to-market, managing pilots, partnerships, and the details that make deployments actually work.
  • Forbes 30 Under 30 Manufacturing (2025) and three conference panels in a single year → willing to invest in external visibility, but the topics he speaks on are operational, not self-promotional.
  • Moved through short stints at Bigge and ML Crane Group before founding — signals he was gathering specific domain knowledge quickly, not settling into comfortable roles.

Conversation tips

  • → Ask about the Harmon pilot — he deployed cobots for high-rise fastener installation and will have specific lessons from taking hardware to a real jobsite.
  • → His LinkedIn content is practitioner-level (perception systems, rework elimination) — engage with specifics from that work rather than broad AI or robotics trends.
  • → He came up through crane operations and sales before founding — acknowledge the field experience, not just the startup story; it's the thing that differentiates him from most robotics founders.
  • → He speaks at construction-tech events, not just hard-tech events — frame conversations in contractor economics (labor cost, error rates, safety) rather than pure tech capabilities.

Toolbox

Openers

  • Open on the Harmon deployment — Raise Robotics put Universal Robots cobots on a high-rise fastener installation job in January 2025, one of the first public pilot deployments. Ask what it took to get a GC to say yes to that first live job.
  • Reference the Forbes 30 Under 30 Manufacturing nod in 2025 — it's a specific milestone, and asking what changed operationally in the year leading up to it is a more interesting entry point than congratulating him on it.
  • He posted about building and deploying 'real perception systems' on LinkedIn — leading with that specific language signals you've read his actual work, not just his bio.

Discovery questions

  1. You went from managing crane crews at Bigge to co-founding a robotics company — what did you see in that work that convinced you the automation wedge was in vertical precision tasks specifically?
  2. With the $7.8M Seed closed in August 2025, what does the path from pilot to commercial deployment actually look like — is the bottleneck on the hardware side, the contractor adoption side, or something else?
  3. Your LinkedIn content focuses on workforce readiness and pilot adoption alongside the technical work — how do you think about change management with crews when you're rolling out semi-autonomous systems on an active jobsite?

Avoid

Don't pitch generic 'robotics will replace construction workers' framing — his public content explicitly focuses on workforce readiness and adoption, signaling he thinks carefully about how automation integrates with, not around, existing crews.

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Sources

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Generated by briefthecall.com from public web sources on July 22, 2026. Each claim is linked to its source above.

Automatically generated by AI from public sources. May be inaccurate or out of date. Remove or correct this profile →