Belgium-based fund manager AMAVI Capital, a leading pan-European PropTech investor, is delighted to announce its expansion into the Nordic region. As part of this strategic move, AMAVI Capital’s current fund, AMAVI Proptech Fund, will acquire the full portfolio of 11 companies from SF Ventures AB, a Swedish PropTech investment fund with a Nordic investment scope. This acquisition brings the total number of companies in AMAVI’s portfolio to 22, solidifying its position as a key player in the European PropTech ecosystem.

In addition to acquiring SF Ventures’ PropTech portfolio, AMAVI Capital will also partner up with the Stockholm-based team, Andreas Nordgren and Richard Lindqvist. This talented team will join AMAVI Capital to establish a dedicated Nordic branch for the group, bolstering the company’s local presence and network. This expansion signifies a significant milestone for AMAVI Capital, allowing it to broaden its geographical footprint and enhance its ability to identify and support innovative PropTech startups across Europe. This collaboration between two leading PropTech investors marks a significant step towards fostering innovation and driving sustainable growth in the European real estate technology sector.

AMAVI Capital, with its pan-European mandate, is a hands-on investor, actively supporting companies at the intersection of technology and real estate. With a deep understanding of the European property market, AMAVI Capital has successfully identified and nurtured promising PropTech ventures, driving positive change and revolutionizing the way we build, transact, use, and interact with buildings.

Andreas Nordgren and Richard Lindqvist, on the other hand, have established themselves as prominent players in the PropTech investment landscape, focusing on the Nordic region. Their portfolio includes a.o. energy optimization company Myrspoven, property management tool Pigello and AI-driven floorplan generator Laiout. With a track record of investing in early-stage PropTech companies, the team brings extensive knowledge and experience to the partnership. Their strong network within the Nordic ecosystem will be instrumental in uncovering emerging PropTech startups with high-growth potential.

Together, AMAVI Capital is committed to providing PropTech startups with the necessary capital, mentorship, and industry expertise to accelerate their growth and achieve meaningful impact. By joining forces, the two firms will enhance their ability to identify disruptive innovations, support the next generation of PropTech pioneers, and contribute to the transformation of the European real estate and construction industry.

Arne Allewaert and Frédéric Van den Weghe, Managing Partners at AMAVI Capital, commented on the expansion into the Nordics, saying: “We are thrilled to embark on this new chapter for AMAVI Capital as we expand our reach into the Nordics. The acquisition of SF Ventures’ PropTech portfolio and the establishment of our Nordic branch are significant milestones that align perfectly with our pan-European investment strategy. This strategic move enhances our capabilities to identify and support cutting-edge PropTech startups, leveraging the region’s technological advancements and sustainability drive. We are confident that AMAVI Nordics will bring added value to our investors, portfolio companies, and the broader PropTech ecosystem. Together, we look forward to driving innovation and fostering positive change in the European real estate industry.”

“We are excited to collaborate with AMAVI Capital,” commented Andreas Nordgren and Richard Lindqvist. “This partnership represents a strategic alignment of our investment philosophies and will allow us to leverage our respective strengths to unearth transformative PropTech opportunities in the Nordics and beyond. By supporting innovative startups, we aim to redefine the real estate landscape and contribute to the sustainable development of our cities.”

Today, nami, a leading multi-sensing platform and ecosystem enabler for the Internet of Things (IoT) industry, announced the close of its Series A financing round, raising $10.5 million from strategic investors including Verizon Ventures, AMAVI Capital, INSPiRE and Aconterra.

nami enables enterprise customers to rapidly deploy intelligent presence, motion, and situation-aware IoT services. The company’s full-stack platform ingests raw sensor data, augments it into actionable metadata, and uses it to trigger automation across entire IoT environment, delivering unprecedented use cases. Over the past two years, nami has developed a powerful platform for software-based sensing applications, featuring cutting-edge sensing topologies and associated intellectual property. With this new funding, nami is poised to expand its team and geographical presence to rapidly deploy its advanced digital sensing infrastructure across residential and commercial buildings on three continents.

“This funding round empowers nami to achieve our mission of building an ecosystem of AI sensors that cater to IoT players, internet service providers, insurance companies, and others across multiple verticals,” said Jean-Eudes Leroy, co-founder and CEO of nami. “Our innovative nami app brings peace of mind to families with security, safety, and wellness use cases while ensuring the utmost privacy. Additionally, our partners’ applications and dashboards utilize data from our API to enhance automation, complement their security solution and improve health outcomes in different types of environments.”

“At Verizon Ventures, we invest in companies whose innovative solutions leverage 5G and other advanced network technologies to deliver impactful new capabilities for both consumers and business customers,” said Michelle McCarthy, Managing Director at Verizon Ventures. “nami’s talented and seasoned team has laid out an impressive new vision for connected homes, transforming them into intelligent living spaces. We look forward to supporting them as they develop digital sensing infrastructure for residential and commercial buildings in Asia, Europe and North America.”

“We are thrilled to be part of the nami project, which aims to digitize walls and ceilings through non-intrusive sensing technology,” said Frédéric Van Weghe, Managing Partner at AMAVI Capital. “In the wake of the global agenda for carbon neutrality in residential and commercial buildings, the ability to deploy non-line-of-sight sensing technology across wide surfaces, detecting occupancy, is a major leap forward for the PropTech industry.”

“What a great journey to build investment foundations for nami and proactively contribute to grow its business in Japan” said Ryosuke Takatsuki, Representative Director of INSPiRE Mutualistic Symbiosis Fund. “We are very excited by our cooperation with nami in Health & Wellness space for Mimamori project in Japan. Together, we pave the way for properly aging in place thanks to the right mix of AI and IoT technologies, made easy to deploy. Just Japan itself is a target market of 26 Millions elderly households for AgeTech.”

“IoT services on motion and presence are vital to reduce the carbon footprint and to increase the safety of people in residential and commercial buildings. nami’s multi-sensing platform realizes this in a highly scalable way by using existing widely adopted technology that doesn’t require line of sight. Situation awareness of people can be a global gamechanger for many use cases including energy management, alarm detection, and elderly monitoring.”, says Ron Schuermans, founding Partner of Aconterra. “We’re thrilled to welcome nami in Aconterra’s smart building tech ecosystem and to support such an amazing team.”

Use water twice! 💦🌍💧

AMAVI is proud to announce its 8th fund investment: looking at the daily newspaper headlines on drought and waterscarcity, Hydraloop offers an urgently needed solution for a water sustainable world! The company has developed a decentralized ‘grey water’ recycling system. This easy-to-use home appliance treats shower and bath water to be re-used in toilets, washing machines and for garden irrigation. The solution allows a reduction of up to 45% of scarce drinking water, without compromising on any comfort!

It’s patented technology was elected “Best of the Best”, “Best Startup”, “Best of Innovation” and “Best Sustainable Product” at the CES 2020 trade fair in Las Vegas and is currently being sold globally through a network of 140 sales, distribution and service partners.

AMAVI Capital has led the 4,5m EUR investment round, with co-investments from The Future of Water Fund and crowdfunding through the Crowdcube platform.

• LEKO LABS’s sustainably-sourced wood-based building materials solution able to replace up to 75% of concrete and steel used in a single building, dramatically reducing carbon footprint during construction
• Wall system is highly insulating and can reduce heating and cooling needs by up to 87% whilst creating more commercially available floor space due to thinner wall requirements
• New funding will be used to accelerate roll-out of LEKO LABS’s advanced software and robotics construction solution to supply finished walls across Europe
• Total funding now sits at $23m

Luxembourg, 22nd February 2022. LEKO LABS, the Luxembourg based carbon negative construction company, today announces a $21 million Series A funding round.

The investment is led by urban sustainability-focused fund 2150 with participation from the Microsoft Climate Innovation Fund, Tencent, AMAVI, Rise PropTech Fund, Extantia and Freigeist. The total footprint of real estate developed, built or managed by LEKO LABS’s new investor base totals approximately 500 million sq ft., which corresponds to an area the size of Manhattan.

Former Lilium CCO Dr. Remo Gerber also joins the company as CEO, with current CEO and founder Francois Cordier reverting to the CTO role with the focus of furthering its groundbreaking sustainable building materials, robotics and software development.

LEKO LABS has developed a novel wall and floor system based entirely on wood and wood fibre, which is capable of replacing up 75% of concrete and steel currently used in constructing a single building. In incorporating engineered wood and a fully circular manufacturing process, the system provides not only a sustainable approach to building but superior insulation properties with thinner walls, enabling up to 10% more floor space for a given building.

The technology can be used for buildings up to 100m tall and multiple developments are in completion to date in its Benelux home market, from homes to office buildings, data-centres and beyond. The wall system is also highly insulating and can reduce heating and cooling needs of a building by up to 87% compared to today’s standards, whilst potentially enabling buildings to remain carbon neutral over their entire lifetime.

LEKO LABS’s software platform calculates and optimises thermal, acoustic and static properties of the buildings, resolving moisture and noise problems typically associated with wooden buildings. Its algorithm optimizes each building reducing wood usage vs traditional builds by up to 50%, making best use of the precious natural resource.

By introducing an automotive style, robotics driven approach to the manufacturing of buildings, more can be delivered in much shorter time and at higher quality in comparison to traditional construction approaches. This benefits not only construction companies but also workers able to perform their duties in a safe and clean environment.

The Series A funding is one of the most substantial capital raises in the sustainable building sector in Europe, an area for a long time underfunded by venture capital investments. This is especially important considering 39% of global greenhouse gas emissions come from housing with one third of that from raw materials production of concrete and steel and two thirds from heating and cooling our buildings. The new funding will enable LEKO LABS to scale its advanced software and robotics construction solution throughout Europe including Germany, the Nordics and the UK, supplying finished walls from its factory in Luxembourg.

Francois Cordier, CTO and Founder at LEKO LABS: “I’m delighted to welcome Remo as our new CEO and our new investors to help deliver our vision towards a more sustainable building sector. Together we have a strong shot on the goal of reducing global greenhouse gas emissions in 2040 by 1% using the LEKO LABS advanced building technology. His experience in scaling companies and capitalising them will be instrumental for the success of the company.”

Dr. Remo Gerber, CEO at LEKO LABS: “I could not be more excited to join the journey with Francois and the entire LEKO LABS team, it’s such an important and critical mission. We are making a difference today, each of our walls saves several tons of CO2 here and now. By scaling up our solution with automotive robotics we will achieve global impact in the coming years.”

The investor group was led by urban sustainability technology VC fund 2150, who closed their first $310 million fund in October 2021. The fund’s mission is to invest in technologies addressing the planet’s most pressing climate change problems, and they have in particular identified the built environment as a key challenge.

Christian Hernandez, co-founder at 2150 said: “The LEKO LABS team is on an important mission to help decarbonise the built environment with a fundamentally different and scalable approach. We are delighted to partner with LEKO LABS bringing our climate tech and strong European property investor basis to play and help adoption of a groundbreaking new approach.”

LEKO LABS’s 5L walls are commercially attractive to build with, and when combined with inbuilt insulation can reduce wall thickness by up to 40%, creating more property floor space. Furthermore, usage of the solution can enable total building times to be shrunk by up to 50%, reducing noise and waste at construction sites to a minimum. Thus, overall building with LEKO LABS’s system is close to carbon neutral with a commercially superior solution.

The system of LEKO LABS can be applied in most building settings from single family homes, to apartment or office buildings and industrial warehouses or data centers. It is a commercially attractive solution with one of the lowest carbon footprints possible from the moment the building is completed and throughout the lifetime with low heating and cooling emissions. So future residents can sleep in peace knowing they built sustainable and corporate organisations have a real solution to help achieve their Net Zero goals.

About LEKO LABS:

LEKO LABS S.A. was founded by Francois Cordier in 2017 with a vision to accelerate the adoption of sustainable building materials in the built environment. It has grown to over 30 FTE in Luxembourg and has recently opened a subsidiary in Switzerland and will soon open an office in London. It has developed a groundbreaking wood composite structure capable of replacing concrete bearing walls in any type of building up to 100m tall. Buildings are delivered today in its home BENELUX market, saving thousands of tons of CO2 and expansion is planned across Europe in 2022.

Press release

Cintoo receives funding to accelerate growth from AMAVI Capital, Armilar Venture Partners, Accenture Ventures, UI Investissement and Region Sud Investissement

Cintoo has today announced a Series A investment of 5.3 million € ($6 million) from five international investors – AMAVI Capital, Armilar Venture Partners, Accenture Ventures, UI Investissement and Region Sud Investissement.

Cintoo’s SaaS platform, Cintoo Cloud, leverages Reality Data in the cloud and is at the convergence of Reality Capture and Digital Twins. Reality Capture devices, such as laser scanners or drones, are frequently used to capture the as-built conditions of a physical space, such as a building construction area, a factory or a plant, so that teams working on retrofit, construction or simulation projects can do their design or control work remotely without needing to visit the space. However, making such gigantic Reality Capture data accessible to stakeholders via the cloud has always been a challenge. Cintoo’s multimodal, hardware agnostic platform is the response to this challenge. Cintoo Cloud uses a unique, patent-pending, core point cloud-to-mesh engine, and interconnects with BIM and Digital Twin platforms to bridge the gap between the physical and digital worlds. Accurate data of buildings, factories, plants, or any other industrial asset, becomes accessible and easily interpretable, by experts and non-experts alike, from a simple web browser from anywhere at any time, using Cintoo’s 3D mesh streaming technology.  

With approximately three billion square feet of laser scan data uploaded so far, spanning 4,000 projects, Cintoo Cloud is currently being used by more than 20,000 users in BIM, construction and Industry 4.0 organizations across the US, Canada, Europe and Australasia as a unique source of trustful Reality Data to better manage and collaborate on both brownfield and greenfield projects, saving significant resources, time and money.

The investment will be used to expand Cintoo Cloud’s capabilities to meet the needs of Industry 4.0 and BIM and construction customers, developing next generation features for asset management, progress monitoring and industrial metaverse exploration. This investment will also help Cintoo further expand its business in North America, Europe and APAC.

The Series A funding was co-led by AMAVI Capital and Armilar Venture Partners, and counted with a participation from Accenture Ventures, as well as from Cintoo’s prior Investors, UI Investissement and Region Sud Investissement, who continue to support the business.

Dominique Pouliquen, Cintoo’s CEO, explained: “Our mission is to become the world leader in cloud-based solutions to empower Reality Data on-demand and we’ve made significant in-roads since we launched Cintoo Cloud in 2018.

“We’re very happy to bring AMAVI, Armilar and Accenture Ventures on board. Securing this investment from top European and US VCs, together with the continuous support from UI Investissement and Region Sud Investissement, is testament to the strength of the platform, our team’s industry experience, our technical expertise and our vision for Cintoo. With this funding and support, we can quickly start to turn this vision into reality.”

Frédéric Van den Weghe, Managing Partner at AMAVI Capital said: “Supporting companies like Cintoo is why we founded AMAVI: as a dedicated investor in companies making the built world more efficient and sustainable, Cintoo ticks a lot of boxes. With its Cintoo Cloud product it makes construction teams across the globe collaborate more efficiently, remote and in real-time. For industry 4.0 applications, it is the platform where digital twin data comes together and is enriched with IoT and AI data to become the dashboard of the factories of the future. Its blue chip customers base, including a.o. leading car manufactures and engineering firms, and more than 20,000 active users on the platform are a clear sign of the value add the Cintoo product brings.”

Pedro Ribeiro Santos, Partner at Armilar Venture Partners commented: “As much as cloud computing keeps bringing innovation and openness to many industries, there are a few areas in which it has been more challenging to benefit from it, particularly in applications that need to handle huge amounts of data in real time while offering smooth user experiences. 3D Reality Data is one of those areas, that has stayed ripe for disruption until now. Cintoo’s technology, the result of years of R&D, makes it possible, making the data accessible to anyone and opening the doors to new uses of that data – and making Cintoo an excellent fit for Armilar’s TechTransfer Fund.”

Aurélie Viaux, Investment Director at UI Investissement added: “We have been supporting Cintoo and its management team since its seed round in 2017 and we are very proud to participate today in this new stage of the company’s development, alongside major European investors. This Series A round will enable Cintoo to continue its international development and to establish itself as the world leader in cloud-based solutions to empower reality data on demand. This is a fundamental solution for the future development of the BIM and Industry 4.0 markets.”

About Cintoo
Cintoo is a French and US startup, established in 2013 to find a solution for managing terabytes of Reality Capture data in the cloud for Architecture, Engineering, Construction, and Industry 4.0 businesses. The company launched its SaaS platform, Cintoo Cloud, in 2018, which uses its patent-pending, core point cloud-to-mesh engine to stream huge 3D data using any PC, laptop or tablet with a web browser. Email contact@cintoo.com or visit www.cintoo.com

About AMAVI Capital
AMAVI PropTech Fund is a pan-European investment fund established to support growth of the leading and most promising companies active in the PropTech industry. AMAVI aims to create a bridge between the traditional real estate and construction industry and the most groundbreaking European PropTech companies, by leveraging its combined expertise and network from the real estate, technology and private equity industry. For more information, please visit https://amavi.capital/

About Armilar Venture Partners
Armilar Venture Partners is Portugal’s leading VC funds manager. An independent VC with a history of more than 20 years, a high-performance track record and an international footprint, Armilar is a deep-tech investor, with a focus on early-stage technology-based companies where data, digitisation and connectivity play a central role. For more information, please visit www.armilar.com. The Armilar Venture Partners TechTransfer Fund is supported by InnovFin Equity, with the financial backing of the European Union under Horizon 2020 Financial Instruments and the European Fund for Strategic Investments (EFSI) set up under the Investment Plan for Europe. The purpose of EFSI is to help support financing and implementing productive investments in the European Union and to ensure increased access to financing. The fund is also co-financed by Fundo de Capital e Quase Capital (FC&QC), managed by Banco Português de Fomento, S.A.

About Accenture
Accenture is a global professional services company with leading capabilities in digital, cloud and security. Combining unmatched experience and specialized skills across more than 40 industries, we offer Strategy and Consulting, Interactive, Technology and Operations services — all powered by the world’s largest network of Advanced Technology and Intelligent Operations centers. Our 674,000 people deliver on the promise of technology and human ingenuity every day, serving clients in more than 120 countries. We embrace the power of change to create value and shared success for our clients, people, shareholders, partners and communities. Visit us at accenture.com

About UI Investissement
UI Investissement is an independent Private Equity firm specializing in the development of unlisted French companies. For over 50 years, UI has been committed to work alongside managers and leaders of growing start-ups, SMEs and medium-sized companies (ETIs) to create and develop economically successful companies in the long term. UI Investissement manages nearly €1.5 billion in assets and had invested with more than 300 business managers in essential sectors such as healthcare, agribusiness, business services and industry. Growth and Buyout capital, the historical core of UI’s activity, represents more than two-thirds of the AUM and its more than fifty companies in our portfolio that can rely on UI’s operational expertise and methodological tools. The management teams and investment vehicles dedicated to venture capital and distressed investments support companies throughout their life cycle and contribute to the economic dynamism. Today, UI has more than 70 professionals and 13 regional offices across France. Visit www.ui-investissement.co

About Region Sud Investissement
Région Sud Investissement is the regional investment company created in 2010 by the South Region to support the emergence and development of growth companies. Région Sud Investissement, with a capital of €134m, receives 42% of its capacity from the European Union through the ERDF fund. Région Sud Investissement is advised by Turenne Groupe for the management of its equity investments. Visit www.regionsudinvestissement.com

YouStock announces a new funding round of €3.7 million led by AMAVI Capital, a fund specialising in European PropTech, Région Sud Investissement and the Business Angel Jean-Luc Haddad, founder and CEO of Grospiron International. Founded in 2015 in Monaco, YouStock, led by Alexis Bouresche (CEO) and Pierre Charvet (COO), aims to meet the need to optimise space. Their flexible and affordable solution makes the storage of personal items more democratic.

Customised storage, without lifting a finger

YouStock was born out of a simple observation: the self-storage market has many issues, including inadequate pricing, but also logistical constraints. YouStock resolves them with a solution based on two key principles:

• Reasonable and fair prices. Thanks to an algorithm that calculates the volume of storage required, YouStock can offer a surface area that meets its customers’ needs and can thus offer rates that are up to 40% cheaper than traditional self-storage.

• Simple, customised organisation of storage. Thanks to an online solution, YouStock allows its customers to directly manage the organisation of storage from start to finish: the YouStock team pick up the items from your home, and you can manage your personal items directly yourself. The YouStock solution allows you to have the desired items delivered back to your home within 48 hours thanks to an online inventory using QR codes.

Conquering the digitalisation of self-storage on a European scale

This capital raising is happening at a crucial time for YouStock’s development. Despite the context of last year, YouStock achieved impressive growth and now has over 1200 active customers, representing a 90% increase compared to 2020. The success of its launch in Paris during the lockdown also confirmed the relevance of its strategy. The inflation of the price per square metre in cities has considerably reduced habitable floor area, obliging many people to find new solutions for storing their personal belongings.

The startup wants to take advantage of this new funding round to speed up its development, with the integration of automation processes for delivery and storage. YouStock is also aiming for national and international expansion, for example by opening a branch in Lyon in early 2022 as well as a location in a European capital. These ambitious projects are in line with the objective of its founders: becoming the European leader in urban self-storage within 4 years.

‘Our success in Paris, Monaco and Nice confirms the relevance of a service like YouStock in big cities. By offering city dwellers the fairest, simplest, and most affordable model, we aspire to quickly become a key player. This raising of capital offers a real opportunity for us to gain a foothold throughout France over the next few months.’ Alexis Bouresche, CEO YouStock

‘Ever since its launch, we’ve been impressed by the digital platform developed by the YouStock team, as well as the growth they’ve generated. Supporting YouStock in their ambitions to grow in France and in Europe is perfectly in line with the PropTech focus of our investment strategy. YouStock revolutionises the way you can manage your belongings on demand, short or longer term, and at a very competitive rate. All on an intuitive digital platform.’ Frederic Van den Weghe, Managing Partner AMAVI Capital

About YouStock

In order to make up for the lack of services offered by self-storage and furniture storage brands, two old friends, Alexis Bouresche and Jacopo Marzocco, decided to focus on the concept of ‘storage on demand’.  YouStock was founded in 2015. It experienced rapid growth, allowing it to raise capital for the first time in 2017. Pierre Charvet joined the company in the same year as Associate COO, in order to structure the geographical and strategic development of the company. Today, YouStock operates on the Côte-d’Azur, in Monaco, Paris and the greater Paris region. Tomorrow, Europe!

About AMAVI Capital

AMAVI Capital is one of the first PropTech investors and one of the rare investors to focus solely on this segment in Europe. AMAVI is a fully independent investment vehicle with a European network, created to support the growth of the leading and most promising businesses in the PropTech sector. The main defining feature of AMAVI Capital is its in-depth knowledge of the real-estate sector.

About Région Sud Investissement:

Région Sud Investissement is the regional investment company created in 2010 by the Région Sud (South Region of France) to support the emergence and development of growth companies in the region. Région Sud Investissement, with a capital of €134 million, receives 42% of its funding from the European Union through the ERDF fund.