AEDIFION

PropTech aedifion raises €12 million Series A to substantially cut energy usage across the built environment

Europe’s leading climate tech investor, World Fund, and Beyond Build lead round

• aedifion is a Cologne-based built environment cloud management platform that helps commercial building operators monitor, manage and reduce energy usage across their estate
• aedifion’s digitized platform utilizes artificial intelligence to control HVAC systems in a predictive manner - reducing costs of energy and carbon consumption across the commercial property sector
• Commercial building operators who use aedifion to monitor energy usage are able to reduce CO2 emissions from across their portfolio of property by up to 40%

Cologne/Berlin, January 27th, 2023: aedifion, a PropTech that helps monitor, manage and reduce energy usage in the commercial built environment, has raised €12 million in an oversubscribed Series A round, led by World Fund, Europe’s leading climate tech investor and BeyondBuild, with participation from the family office of SAP's founding family Hopp. Bauwens, Drees & Sommer and MOMENI Venture also participated, along with existing investors BitStone Capital and Phoenix Contact Innovation Ventures. The funding will be used to further develop the platform to enable more cost savings for customers and combat the increasing climate costs of commercial buildings.

aedifion enabling the smart building revolution

Commercial property owners, developers and administrators rely on aedifion’s platform to monitor energy usage across their estates, providing a live overview of gas and electricity consumption on an easy-to-use digital platform. In addition to monitoring, aedifion’s platform can also identify overspend and over-usage of energy, for example heating empty rooms, identifying areas which require increased insulation or retrofitting or use AI to control HVAC systems. By highlighting where and how to drive energy efficiency, the platform enables customers to reduce energy expenditure by up to 40%.

Not only does aedifion drive efficiency savings for businesses, the platform can also save millions of tons of carbon dioxide emissions (CO2e) annually. In Germany alone, there are 2.7 million commercial buildings with around 1.35 billion square meters of net floor space. Based upon energy efficiency savings seen across its current customer base, aedifion calculates that mass-adoption of its software could save more than 10 million tons of CO2 each year just by using the cloud platform.

Johannes Fütterer, founder and CEO of aedifion, said: “We want to make buildings part of the energy system of the future. Thanks to digitization and artificial intelligence, buildings can become part of the energy transition - as virtual power plants that are part of a smart network. We can achieve this because our software contains the best engineering knowledge on the market with more than 13 years of experience. Inefficiencies in operations are automatically identified on an ongoing basis, which saves money and reduces emissions - and all of this is completely digital and scalable across all properties."

The role of AI in decarbonising the build environment

The cloud software platform utilizes artificial intelligence (AI) to monitor, manage and control heating, ventilation, and air conditioning (HVAC) systems in a predictive manner, taking into account factors such as weather (changeability, seasonality, localized forecasting), alongside the thermal capabilities of a building, determined by the software by benchmarking and cross-comparing with other buildings of the same size and usage to determine appropriate energy usage levels. aedifion can also adjust energy purchasing across a built environment so that energy is purchased at ‘low price-point periods (i.e. 4am local time), bundling up energy purchasing across aedifion’s platform, to maximize price efficiency for all users.  

aedifion’s platform is interoperable with other PropTech software and can cross-communicate via an open API to enable customers to seamlessly build it into their technology stack as a one-stop-shop for energy monitoring across their property estate. Well known customers in Germany include AEW, Hines, Art-Invest, Gegenbauer and ROM Technik use the software to achieve their sustainability goals.

Mark Windeknecht, investment manager at World Fund, said: "Office buildings are responsible for 6.6% of global CO2 emissions - an astounding figure. If you can solve energy inefficiencies for commercial buildings, then there is huge potential to reduce the climate impact of this sector at the same time. aedifion is an excellent deep-tech example of how climate mitigation and cost savings can be scaled via software, in a way that suits customers and the planet."

Alexander Reichhuber, Managing Partner at BeyondBuild, said: "We are firmly convinced that due to the urgency to achieve climate targets, efficient optimization is unavoidable before a time-consuming transformation of buildings. aedifion plays a key role here with its technology.”

aedifion was spun out of RWTH Aachen University’s Institute for Building Technology in 2017, a leading research institute. The company participated in a number of of research initiatives funded by the German Federal Ministry of Economics and Climate Protection (BMWK), as well as a number of initiatives with other research institutions including FU Berlin, University of Stuttgart and Fraunhofer ISE, where it has partnered with the likes of Eon, Uniper and Züblin in the process.

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‍ENDS

About aedifion

aedifion GmbH is a PropTech from Cologne that helps to operate buildings sustainably, efficiently and transparently. With the AI-based cloud platform, the energy consumption, CO2 emissions and operating costs of buildings can be reduced and their sustainability improved. A win-win-win for owners, operators and tenants. The company combines engineering and information technology expertise in a broad portfolio of solutions.

About World Fund

World Fund is the leading Europe-focused climate venture capital fund established by Daria Saharova, Danijel Višević, Craig Douglas, and Tim Schumacher. From energy, food, agriculture, and land use, to building materials, manufacturing and transport, World Fund is investing in European tech with significant climate performance potential (CPP). The investment team comprises engineers, physicists, chemists, biologists, early and growth stage investors. World Fund is backing those entrepreneurs who are building tech for a regenerative world.

About BeyondBuild

BeyondBuild is the leading technology and digitization platform for a sustainable and future-proof real estate industry. Backed by top-tier investors and entrepreneurs, BeyondBuild invests value-added capital in or co-builds leading technology companies. The aim is a holistic investment portfolio that sets the gold standard for tomorrow's buildings and districts with an ecosystem approach.

About Family Office Hopp

The Family Office Hopp coordinates and oversees investments by the Hopp family in the areas of technology, renewable energies and real estate. Technology "Made in Germany" and sustainability are priorities. The strong network of the Family Office is available to partners and investment companies.

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As featured in: Forbes, Handelsblatt