Oversubscribed USD 2M pre-seed round boosts Urbio

Urbio accelerates the transition of utilities towards clean energy, with a novel software based on research from world-leading technical university EPFL that reduces ten-fold the time spent on design tasks. Today, customers deal with scattered data sources and manual design processes at the building scale, supported essentially by spreadsheets and fragmented tools. Urbio streamlines design and collaborative processes by generating highly customized proposals for individual buildings or entire cities.

In September, Urbio closed a pre-seed round of $2M from Swiss and international investors, with Wingman Ventures and Contrarian Ventures co-leading the round, and co-investments from Urban Us and David Helgason, founder and former CEO of Unity Technologies.

Asked about the team, Alex Stöckl from Wingman Ventures says: “We’ve known Sébastien and his team for more than a year already and are highly impressed with their ability to build a product that their initial customers love. Without significant funding, the Urbio team has managed to build a strong commercial pipeline and hire strong candidates as the foundation of what we believe will be a global tone-setter in urban energy planning software.”

Co-leading the round, Rokas Peciulaitis from Contrarian Ventures states: “In order to reach ambitious net-zero goals, we really need to rethink our energy systems in cities around the world. Urbio’s team has built a powerful product that is a must-have tool to accelerate decarbonization of energy systems. We are really impressed by the team’s drive, technical expertise and their conviction that it is their company’s core mission to enable more sustainable urban environments globally.“

Urbio is excited by the diversity of these new partnerships. “Besides the capital that will support the growth of our team, we’re thrilled to count on the extensive experience in software and climate tech of our investors, as well as far-reaching international networks”, says Sébastien Cajot, CEO of Urbio. “Joining forces with such forward-thinking people represents a giant leap forward for our company. This will let us reach customers faster and with a considerably better product that is up to the challenge of the energy transition.”

(Press release)