A hands-off approach from the Swiss university makes starting a software company like Optiml — which is using AI to map out CO² cuts in real estate — easier, says CEO Evan Petkov.
ETH Zürich spinout Optiml is looking to change the way real estate investment works with a software platform that will enable investors to bake CO² emission cuts into every deal. But it does not want to be labelled as an ESG startup.
“We really try to make sure we are not an ESG software company,” says co-founder and CEO Evan Petkov. “This is a new category of software called real estate decision intelligence, where CO² is actually part of the equation of investment planning.
“We focus on today and the future with the investment decisions, and then connect that to the software infrastructure of the company. That process is highly scalable to almost every major real estate company, so our vision is to solidify this category of real estate decision intelligence around the world, and connect cost and CO² and policy inside of that decision-making engine.”
Optiml’s product stems from research Petkov did as an engineering PhD student at SusTec, the sustainability research group at Swiss university ETH Zürich, where he met co-founder and chief technology officer Jordi Campos.
The software models buildings and takes in a range of different datasets, then uses a type of artificial intelligence called optimisation to show real estate managers and consultants how to renovate them to lower CO² emissions cost-effectively. That’s a big change for an industry Petkov says is still mainly using Microsoft Excel to plan renovation work.
“I’ve talked to and analysed the processes of over 200 real estate companies all over the world”
“At this point, I’ve talked to and analysed the processes of over 200 real estate companies all over the world,” he says. “These companies usually have assets in multiple countries, and we realise that the process for how they make investment decisions is very much not data driven. There’s a lot of Excel, it’s very manual, it’s static and it cannot be updated.
“But the process is largely mappable, and that’s where we see our impact. There is essentially a huge hole in their systems, which lie between ESG software companies like Measurabl and Deepki which came before us – they are essentially tracking the energy use of the buildings and doing ESG reporting.”
Although the startup may not want to be viewed as an ESG company, regulatory concerns do play a part in the data it takes in to help users plan out their investments. But Petkov argues that the stick of regulation may be secondary to the carrot of savings.
“There are a lot of examples of real estate asset managers that actually invest above the sustainability regulations for buildings in order to make a greener building and actually rent it out at a higher rate,” he says. “They call that the green premium. This has been shown over and over again, and it’s really picking up steam.”
ETH Zürich’s licencing-not-equity approach gives software spinouts a boost
Optiml spun out of ETH in late 2022, initially raising $1.6m in an angel round featuring real estate developer WSG, which has since lent its expertise and operated as a kind of product ambassador for the startup in the industry.
Although the ETH name helped the startup secure pilot projects with large companies like Credit Suisse, Axa and Grosvenor as soon as it spun out, Petkov praises the university for having a hands-off approach, especially in contrast to British universities like Cambridge and Oxford or California-based Stanford, where he completed his Master’s degree.
That stance makes it attractive to start a company at ETH, even if Switzerland is a smaller market. It’s a federally funded university, which means it operates as a non-profit institution. Although ETH doesn’t have its own venture fund, it has strong links with European VCs, making it easier for its spinout companies to raise venture capital. There’s another advantage: a startup like Optiml does not have to give up equity.
“It really helps the VC case that one, we have protected IP and two, that [ETH’s ownership is] actually not shares”
“What ETH largely does is take shares of hardware companies, but for software you have a licensing agreement,” Petkov says. That’s because physical products need more upfront investment and can be patented, while software works more on the intellectual property level. It can also prove an advantage when it comes to raising money.
“It really helps the VC case that one, we have protected IP and two, that [ETH’s ownership is] actually not shares,” he says. “That really helps a lot.”
Venture firm BitStone Capital led the $4m first close of Optiml’s pre-seed round, which was closed last month and announced last week, and the company is now aiming to reach a second close in the next couple of months, Petkov says. It is already looking further ahead.
“We want to raise a seed round before 2026,” he adds. “We’re building a very innovative and complex software product, and that means we need a lot of technical people.
“We imagine we’ll be getting up to 20 people or so by early next year, and then trying to figure out how we actually leverage our headquarters in Zurich, where the core tech and product teams will sit, but also [maintain] satellite offices, potentially in Munich and London. After the seed round, we imagine we’ll have broader European coverage and will be entering the US market.”
