Urbio raises USD 2 million in an oversubscribed pre-seed round

28.09.2021 11:00, Isabelle Mitchell

The Swiss EPFL spin-off Urbio, developing software to help energy providers plan the energy transition globally, has raised USD 2 million in a pre-Seed round co-led by Wingman Ventures and Contrarian Ventures. The funding will enable Urbio to recruit team members, improve the commercial product, and expand commercial activities in the EU. Alex Stöckl, partner at Wingman Ventures, and Rokas Peciulaitis, managing partner at Contrarian Ventures, co-lead the pre-seed round and will join the board of directors. Urban Us followed up their initial investment in the wake of Urbio’s participation in their and MINI’s startup accelerator, URBAN-X. David Helgason, founder and former CEO of Unity Technologies, also joined the round as an angel investor. Urbio is one of the TOP 100 Swiss Startups 2021.

Urbio accelerates the transition of utilities towards clean energy with a novel software, based on research from 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 USD 2 million 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 said: “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 added: “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 the 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,” said 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.”


The Urbio co-founders (from left to right): Nicolas Sommer (business development director), Nils Schüler (technical director), and Sébastien Cajot (CEO and product director)