Embue, a whole building intelligence, monitoring, automation and control solution for multifamily apartment building portfolios, has raised a 2.3M seed round led by Shadow Ventures, a thesis-centered venture capital firm focused on seed stage technology companies disrupting the built environment, with participation from Avesta Fund, Leder Investments, former Chief Product Officer at Netflix and now at Vibrant Planet, with his spouse and co-climate-tech investor Julie Raymond, and Robert Sheppard, affordable housing pioneer working to preserve and decarbonize existing affordable housing, among others.
Embue addresses the urgent need to decarbonize and improve energy and operational efficiency in the millions of multifamily apartment buildings emitting massive amounts of carbon and wasting energy.
Buildings account for nearly 40 percent of annual global greenhouse gas emissions, and two thirds of the building stock that will be in use in 2040 exists today. Multifamily owners and operators are increasingly retrofitting their buildings to decarbonize, to meet increasing local and national mandates for carbon reduction, and to improve energy efficiency and operational efficiency. According to RMI, decarbonizing large multifamily buildings is a 1.3T investment opportunity.
Embue is currently installed or under contract in over 6,000 units at major national building portfolios with a significant number of senior and senior affordable buildings. The company has a rapidly growing footprint in ten states. The company’s seed funding will accelerate platform development, partner recruitment and enablement, and sales to large apartment building portfolios.
Embue customer Darien Crimmin, vice president of Energy and Sustainability at WinnDevelopment says: “Winn is committed to decarbonizing our portfolio and have begun deploying Embue in several of our buildings and have seen a significant reduction in carbon emissions and improved energy savings. Embue provides the whole building intelligence, monitoring and control we need to manage our buildings holistically, ensuring they are operating at peak efficiency from an emissions and energy standpoint and making them easier to manage while improving resident comfort.”
“We have been working with Embue since the company joined our first Multifamily Technology Accelerator and have been impressed with the team and how fast its technology is being adopted by major national portfolios,” says Nick Durham, senior associate at Shadow Ventures and member of Embue’s Board of Directors. “Embue is laser focused on multifamily, a key part of the built environment with unique needs that have not been met by other vendors.”
“What we are seeing now is a sea change in the way our customers and their investors are taking action on climate change. Embue helps them meet their carbon reduction goals while providing the strong financial returns they require from any new technology. This seed round will enable us to aggressively expand our reach to meet the needs of the large number of portfolios that are struggling with how to modernize buildings to make them more efficient from carbon, energy and cost perspectives, and to improve resident comfort,” says Robert Cooper, president and CEO of Embue.