Brainbox AI currently raising Series A financing
Brainbox AI currently raising Series A financing
TIM LEEMASTER
Sam Ramadori, chief business development officer at Brainbox AI
Brainbox AI, the Montreal, Canada-based building services firm, is currently running a Series A round targeting both venture capital and strategic players, according to Sam Ramadori, chief business development officer.
The round is expected to close before the end of the year. Ramadori declined to comment further.
CTO and co-founder Jean Simon Venne told this news service in May the company may kick off a funding round by the end of 2019. At that time the company was looking at different options that included a seed round of a few million dollars or the possibility of something larger with a strategic player, such as a real estate firm.
Ramadori said the momentum the company has generated in the six months since launching into the market in May, when he joined the firm, is driving for a larger round.
At that time the company was working with less than half a million square feet of real estate and is now at 6m square feet. The company expects to hit 10m by the end of the year.
“That’s across all kinds of buildings,” Ramadori said. The company originally targeted retail spaces, offices, hotels, schools and warehouses but has also brought in data centers, grocery stores and hospitals.
Brainbox is working with 15 clients in Canada and Australia, and has begun generating revenue. It plans to expand into the US, including New York City and Boston, in the next few weeks.
Ramadori said he has been surprised by how many real estate players have been willing to install the company’s technology in their highest quality properties. He had originally assumed companies would first start with their less prominent real estate.
Brainbox is applying neural networks to heating, ventilation and air conditioning systems. It has developed over 30 algorithms, including ones that can “coach out” the best option if two systems recommend opposite courses of action.
Other algorithms the company has developed plan staged startups of the different HVAC systems to use the least possible energy, which reduces costs. Brainbox says it can reduce energy costs by up to 35% over three months. Carbon footprints can be cut by up to 40%.
“The cost savings are compelling when most executives consider coping with global warming as a cost requiring refurbishing building and upgrading equipment,” said Ramadori, who has a background in private equity.
The company has doubled its staff to 34 since May, with 80% engineers. By the end of the year Brainbox expects to add another half dozen staff. That includes a sales and distribution chief who will also hire a team.
The company was spun out of Realterm, the Maryland-based real estate investment firm. Realterm manages USD 4.2bn in assets, mainly logistics properties, through three private equity funds, according to its website.
Read our May interview with Brainbox CTO Jean Simon Venne here.