We are delighted to announce our investment in Norwegian company Spacemaker, in a $25 million Series A round, alongside Atomico, with participation from Danish property developer NREP, Nordic property developer OBOS, UK Real Estate technology fund Round Hill Ventures and earlier investors including Norweigan construction technology investor Construct Venture.
As urban centers globally become increasingly crowded, new developments need to make the best possible use of the available land in a sustainable way, while balancing increasingly stringent planning regulations. Yet today developers, architects and urban planners plan sites largely “by hand”. This means that they are limited by time and cost to explore at most 20-30 options as they try to optimise for a multitude of regulatory, design, environmental and economic constraints.
Spacemaker has developed the world’s first platform that allows developers and architects to use AI at massive scale to generate and analyse optimal solutions to multi-building residential development design based on physical data, regulations, and project requirements. Developers and architects can analyse their designs and optimize for a range of different parameters, from sun exposure to noise to wind to apartment size, and choose from hundreds of possible layouts generated in only hours.
By allowing developers and architects to test many iterations from the earliest stages, Spacemaker can help developers configure volumes smarter, increasing sellable area and reducing the time and cost of project completion. At the same time, by intelligently distributing volumes, the AI can help dramatically improve the living quality of future residents of these buildings.
Håvard Haukeland, Co-founder & CEO of Spacemaker said: “Today developers, architects and urban planners only have the tools to explore a few options for building design as they try to optimise for everything from environmental factors to regulations. With Spacemaker they can, for the first time, generate and assess billions of possible solutions to multi-building residential development design in only hours. We’re proud to partner with Atomico and Northzone who are fully aligned with our global mission of empowering the industry to build better and more sustainable cities using AI.”
Michiel Kotting, Partner at Northzone said: “Spacemaker’s platform is a powerful tool in an under-digitised industry, creating value across the entire pre-build process, for developers, architects, planning departments, and ultimately, inhabitants. It is a perfect example of AI augmenting human expertise, creating efficiencies and improving sustainability. We are impressed with Håvard and the founding team’s singular vision of building Spacemaker into the category-defining company to address urban construction planning challenges on a global scale.”
Since launch in late 2018, Spacemaker has attracted some of the largest names in property development in the Nordics and globally including Skanska, Obos, AF Gruppen and NREP among others. They have also hired a world-class team of nearly 100 data scientists, mathematicians, software developers, architects and urban planners.
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