Bau Ventures is a fund and venture studio focused on investing and building startups in the built environment sector.
German real estate services company Drees & Sommer is the anchor investor in a newly launched venture fund and venture building studio, Bau Ventures.
The evergreen, early-stage VC fund will invest in proptech, urban tech, construction tech, energy, mobility and the circular economy. It will also build companies in the same fields.
The fund already has three investments in its portfolio: Aedifion, an AI software platform for streamlining technical building systems, which was spun out of RWTH Aachen University; Architrave, a digital real estate data management company; and Bable-Smartcities, a software platform for smart city projects.
It also has several companies that it is co-creating in stealth.
Bau Ventures is headed by Daniel Hinz, who was involved in venture building and venture investment at Drees & Sommer. Dominik Zalewski, who founded business services consultancy Urban Impact, is head of investment.
In a LinkedIn post announcing the launch, Zalewski said the ventures group, through its partnership with Drees & Sommer, will have access to European engineers, planners and architects.
“We sit on five decades of data and have access to pretty much everyone in building and construction industry,” he said.
