The founders of Aedifion
Aedifion, a German real estate technology start-up, has raised €12 million in a Series A funding round to help commercial buildings reduce their energy consumption and emissions.
The Cologne-based start-up has developed a cloud-based management platform, powered by artificial intelligence, for the real estate sector to manage and track a building’s energy consumption and expenditure.
The Series A round was led by World Fund, a new climate-focused technology fund, and proptech company BeyondBuild. Other backers include the family office of the founders of SAP and MOMENI Venture.
Its artificial intelligence platform monitors a building’s various systems such as heating, ventilation and air conditioning to control and predict their use, taking into account factors such as weather forecasts and the building’s thermal capacities. It identifies areas of over-consumption and over-expenditure of energy and adjusts the purchase of energy to periods of lower prices.
Aedifion Managing Director Johannes Fütterer said commercial buildings have a role to play in the energy transition.
The company claims its system can help customers cut their energy costs by up to 40%.
“We can achieve this because our software contains the best engineering knowledge on the market with more than 13 years of experience,” Fütterer said. “Inefficiencies in operations are automatically identified on an ongoing basis, saving money and reducing emissions – and it’s all fully digital and scalable across properties.”
The company currently only operates in the German market and will seek to enter new markets in Europe, such as the UK, France and the Nordics, through its existing property clients. Some of his existing clients in Germany include AEW, Hines and Gegenbauer.
With its new financing in tow, Aedifion will seek to expand its presence in a challenging economic environment characterized by higher borrowing costs – an environment where commercial real estate is not immune to risk. This week, EU officials warned of a potential slowdown in industry.
Aedifion said such a slowdown highlights the need for building owners to become more profitable.
“Commercial property providers are, like everyone else right now, under pressure to run their businesses in the most economical way possible,” a spokesperson for the startup said.
“Adopting aedifion is a step many of them have taken to reduce energy consumption costs across their property portfolio and reduce overall operating costs in tough economic times. As such, our growth plans have been unaffected by the recession – if anything, the obvious need to reduce energy costs in real estate – alongside the clear and obvious threat of the climate crisis and its impact on the sector – accelerated our plans.”
Aedifion emerged from the Institute of Building Technology at RWTH Aachen University in 2017. Previously, it participated in government-funded programs and raised seed funding last year.
According to figures cited by Mark Windeknecht, Chief Investment Officer at lead investor World Fund, office buildings are responsible for 6.6% of global CO2 emissions.
“If you can solve energy inefficiencies in commercial buildings, there’s huge potential to reduce the climate impact of this sector at the same time.”