• The High-Tech Gründerfonds, Swisscom Ventures and Rainmaking Impact are investing 1.5 million francs in the Swiss climate-tech start-up viboo.
• The oversigned pre-seed round reflects investors' strong interest and trust in viboo's innovative energy-saving solutions for buildings.
• viboo will drive forward the commercialization of the proven Predictive—Control—as—a service platform and help shape the decarbonization of buildings in the upcoming heating season.

ZÜRICH, SWITZERLAND — viboo, a software company that makes buildings more energy efficient, has successfully completed a pre-seed financing round of CHF 1.5 million through investments from the High-Tech Gründerfonds, Swisscom Ventures and Rainmaking Impact. The round was oversubscribed, reflecting strong investor confidence and interest in the company's potential to decarbonize buildings.

Buildings account for 40 percent of energy consumption in Europe, with existing buildings offering significant untapped potential for energy savings. A building's heating and cooling systems are usually controlled via room thermostats or thermostatic valves. However, even intelligent thermostats are often unable to make optimal decisions to control the room temperature, as the underlying control techniques are based on heuristics or simple feedback principles. The integration of measurement and forecast data and their combination with artificial intelligence is crucial to make a building truly energy efficient.

viboo has developed a predictive control-as-a-service (PCaaS) platform that allows partner manufacturers to fully exploit the potential of intelligent thermostats. First, the platform's algorithms learn the thermal behavior of a building. viboo's technology can then predict the building's temperature development, taking into account factors such as weather forecasts and occupants' preferences, and then optimize energy consumption in the rooms. As a result, viboo can reduce a building's energy consumption.

The funding will be used to drive commercialization during the upcoming heating season, with a focus on commercial buildings, particularly in cities and towns. viboo has already worked with industry-leading partners such as Danfoss, ABB, Netatmo and Bouygues to fully validate its solution. During the last heating season, 20-40 percent of energy was saved.

Felix Bünning, founder and CEO of viboo, is pleased with the conclusion of the pre-seed round: “In the last heating season, we showed the effect of our technology and that we are able to attract partners from the entire value chain. Now we're ready to expand our offering and fully tap into the commercial building market. Our solution helps these buildings save energy and provides a quick return on investment. We are grateful for the support from our investors and look forward to working with them to address the major issue of decarbonizing buildings. ”

viboo has its roots in world-leading research at Empa and ETH Zurich as well as in other outstanding building automation laboratories at RWTH Aachen and the Lawrence Berkeley National Lab. The company and its founders have won several prestigious awards, including a BRIDGE grant, all Venture Kick levels, the Gebert Rüf Foundation's Innobooster, the Swiss GreenTech Startup Battle, the Empa Innovation Award and an ETH medal.

Gregor Haidl, senior investment manager at High-Tech Gründerfonds, says: “viboo's decentralized approach is very promising. The platform and algorithms are a real revolution for existing and older buildings. The results of the last heating season show that viboo can make a significant contribution to the decarbonization of buildings. ”

Res Witschi, delegate for sustainable digitization at Swisscom, comments: “We are proud to invest in viboo. Swiss climate tech companies are known for the quality of their products and solutions and the impact they can have. viboo has a strong team that combines an entrepreneurial mindset with strong technical foundations. ”

Alex Farcet, co-founder of Rainmaking Impact, adds: “Digital technologies will be critical to reducing emissions in the building sector, and viboo's innovation can be implemented quickly and on a large scale to increase energy efficiency. Our consortium of investors is pleased to support viboo's journey. ”

‍