German property-technology start-up Dabbel has raised €3.6m in a financing round.

Founded in 2018, Dabbel has developed cloud-based AI software that plugs into the building management systems (BMS) of commercial buildings to run the energy systems autonomously and in real time.

The firm’s vision is to eliminate the dependence on human interaction to control and operate the energy systems and technical installations in buildings. Implementation of the technology takes less than a week and can be done remotely and without requiring upfront costs, capex or infrastructure adjustments.

Through its predictive modelling approach, Dabbel’s edge AI automatically compensates for the data gap arising from the fact that most commercial buildings are not equipped with ideal IoT or smart building infrastructure and calibrates the HVAC system in the building, reducing up to 40% of its energy consumption and cutting carbon emissions.

These results have been validated across different use cases and geographies spanning Europe, USA, China and Australia.

Energy efficiency improvements within the real estate industry have been identified as a top priority by the EU Commission. Looking at the energy performance indicators of commercial buildings, 75% of these buildings are still inefficient in terms of their energy consumption. It is widely expected that regulatory pushes to address this will be imminent, opening market potential for start-ups such as Dabbel.

“The time for passive responses to addressing the critical issue of carbon emission reduction is over,” said Abel Samaniego, CEO of Dabbel. “That is why we decided to take matters into our own hands and develop a solution that actively replaces a flawed human-based decision-making process with an automated one that acts with surgical precision and, thanks to machine learning, will only improve with each iteration.”

So far, the software is available to facility managers of large commercial buildings and several schools. In the future, other educational institutions and use cases will also be able to benefit.

The pre-series A funding round was led by Target Global, alongside Main Incubator (Commerzbank’s early-stage investment arm), SeedX and strategic angel investors.

“We are enthusiastic to work with the team at Dabbel as they offer their clients a tangible and frictionless way to significantly reduce their carbon footprint, helping to close the gap between passive measurement and active remediation,” said Ricardo Schaefer, partner at Target Global.

Michael Varona, divisional board member at Commerzbank, added: “As Commerzbank, we aim to be a reliable partner not only for our client’s financial matters, but also in terms of their sustainable and digital transformation. Dabbel provides corporate clients with a tool helping them to significantly improve their energy management.”

Founded by Abel Samaniego, Javier Ferre and Pablo Stahl, Dabbel has already secured a strong group of clients, including Gelsenwasser, Sasse, Vinci Facilities, Zurzach and E.On. Future Energy Ventures, the venture capital investment and collaboration platform of E.On, is an existing investor in Dabbel.

“At Future Energy Ventures, we strive to find solutions to decarbonise our cities and we have been delighted to find that in Dabbel,” said Ines Bergmann-Nolting, managing partner. “The product is easy to get up and running, drives energy and CO₂ savings quickly, and provides very fast payback. Because of this, Dabbel is already serving customers across continents. We look forward to our continued partnership with Dabbel.”

In addition to the existing functions, the company also plans to introduce a predictive maintenance functionality into the software to help easily detect and predict possible malfunctions within the building’s hardware.