Nexii Building Solutions Inc.’s restart will include refocusing its sustainable building materials on core sectors and expanding manufacturing capacity, as one of its new owners moves its headquarters to Dallas, interim CEO Bill Tucker told Sustainable Biz Canada.

B.C.-based Nexii plummeted from a unicorn valued at $2 billion at its height to being sold for $500,000 to B.C.-incorporated Nexiican Holdings Inc. and Delaware-incorporated NEXII Inc. It filed for creditor protection in January, declaring it owed $109 million.

The company offers Nexiite, a building material that can be poured and cast like concrete, but with up to 36 per cent less carbon emissions during production. It enables quick building assembly and generates minimal waste from manufacturing or construction, Nexii says.

Tucker said Nexii had a strategy to scale up rapidly, but was hobbled by how the construction industry “doesn’t encourage rapid scaling of businesses as often, especially those businesses with innovative products.”

After being restructured by Dallas-based firm 3 Gates (the owner of NEXII Inc. and Nexiican) and receiving an $8-million investment, Nexii is hoping for a new beginning.

“This company deserves to live, it deserves to grow,” Tucker said.

Nexii’s plan to rebuild

Nexii will receive corporate direction from NEXII Inc. at the Dallas office. It will not mean turning away from Canada, and Nexii will remain focused on the North American market. The head count is approximately 70 employees.

The $8-million investment will go to upgrading its Squamish factory with more automation. It is anticipated the upgrade will increase production to 40,000 square feet of Nexiite per shift per month. Full capacity will be 2.5 shifts per month that will make 100,000 square feet of Nexiite.

Nexii also intends to open more facilities: one in the northeast U.S., and a “megaplant” in the Dallas-Fort Worth area of Texas that will have more than double the production of the Squamish site.

The Squamish factory will remain a “very, very significant facility” supplemented by the Texas and northeast U.S. factories, the bridge CEO added.

The plans for a factory in Hazelton, Pa. developed in partnership with actor Michael Keaton was put on hold due to its financial troubles. Tucker said Nexii will return to the location to re-establish the facility.

Finding uses for Nexiite in the commercial retail sector and other types of buildings will be the focus. He emphasized how Nexiite is ideal for data centres because it can be rapidly assembled and is sustainable.

“We will add additional segments to residential, data centre, industrial early in 2025 in order to continue expansion of the business. Right now it’s absolutely stick to the knitting, and do what we know we can make money at,” Tucker said.

Overcoming Nexii’s troubles

In his explanation of why Nexii experienced such a drastic collapse, Tucker pointed to the high costs of innovation as the key obstacle. Nexii built a significant overhead structure in anticipation of scale, but it took more time and money to perfect certain aspects of Nexiite, he continued, and it took more capital to launch Nexiite than the previous leadership anticipated.

While Nexiite found use in numerous commercial, industrial and residential projects, and by companies such as Starbucks and Walmart, the company hit a cash crunch and was unable to raise enough cash before Nexiite was profitable. Nexii saw traction in the fall of 2023 before it entered creditor protection, Tucker said.

Rising interest rates did not help, even for a company that had raised $250 million. Capital became difficult to raise over the past 18 to 24 months because the market became reluctant to invest, the CEO said.

“Nexii was at a difficult stage in its growth in that it had not yet reached profitability. And a result, there was a flight to more traditional, steady state established businesses.”

To avoid the errors from the first iteration of Nexii, the company will now tread very carefully in scaling up. It will scale based on customer demand and add “modest” overhead structures in its development, Tucker said, unlike last time when it expanded quicker than it could adapt.