California-based Butlr Technologies, the world’s first and only anonymous people sensing platform, has secured $20 million in Series A funding. The company also announced today that it signed an agreement with Carrier Global Corporation to embed their technology to make buildings healthier and more energy efficient.
Series A investment
Joined by Carrier, the round was led by Tiger Global (PropelAuth and Zaraye), Ray Stata, the legendary entrepreneur, engineer and co-founder of Analog Devices and newly appointed Board member, and Primetime Partners, an early stage fund dedicated to the estimated $2 trillion opportunity in the emerging Age-Tech market. Also, existing investors E14, Union Labs, Hyperplane Venture Capital and Tectonic Ventures joined the round.
The proceeds of this financing round will be used for the deployment of their patented body heat occupancy sensing technology for the hybrid workforce and senior living.
“From hybrid work to employee experience to smarter, healthy buildings, the COVID-19 pandemic accelerated a number of nascent trends in commercial real estate. It also created urgency in the need for accurate insights on how office space is actually being used,” said Honghao Deng, co-founder and CEO of Butlr.
“Our latest round of funding enables us to support our burgeoning customer and partner base of real estate and facilities executives with the insights they need to make the best decisions,” said Jiani Zeng, co-founder and chief product officer, Butlr.
“Fall detection and prevention is a top issue for our aging population. Butlr is the only solution that will be easy to use, affordable and effective for senior care providers and individuals’ homes,” said Abby Miller Levy, co-founder and managing partner, Primetime Partners. “We partner with founders with proven technology, market demand and strong leadership. Butlr offers all of this and more as it’s poised to capture an even larger share of the $400B senior living space market.”
Energy efficient buildings
The office of the future needs to accommodate a hybrid workforce and varying employee preferences. From being mere buildings, offices have evolved into a product, complete with a value proposition, customers and substitutes. Like any other product, the office is tested and instrumented before it is launched. Corporate office occupiers and landlords use Butlr’s people sensing technology for private, accurate insights on workplace usage.
In collaboration with Carrier Global Corporation, the leading provider of healthy, safe, sustainable and intelligent building and cold chain solutions, Butlr will embed its body heat sensing technology into its Abound cloud-based digital platform. It will make buildings throughout the world healthier and more energy efficient while lowering their carbon footprint.
Jennifer Anderson, Senior Vice President, Strategy, Business Development & Chief Sustainability Officer, Carrier said, “Carrier Ventures is pleased to invest in Butlr to help bring this innovative new technology to our customers. Together, we’ll further improve anticipation to ensure smarter proactive building management and deliver on our customers’ expectation that their buildings are healthy, safe, sustainable and intelligent.”
People sensing platform
Butlr spun out of MIT Media Lab in 2019 by its co-founders – Honghao Deng and Jiani Zeng. The startup uses a mix of wireless, battery-powered hardware and artificial intelligence to track people’s movements indoors without violating their privacy. The startup uses ceiling-mounted sensors to detect individuals’ body heat to track where a person walks and where they might go next.
Its people sensing platform and Heatic sensors detect someone’s body heat anonymously to determine occupancy, headcount and activity, and generate accurate, real-time and historical spatial insights while being incapable of collecting personally identifiable information.
It supports building operations and facility management with smarter, healthier buildings while providing alerts on unusual activities. Butlr’s patented technology architecture makes for easy deployment in minutes with a low total cost of ownership. Commercial real estate and assisted living facilities rely on Butlr to drive better space utilisation, optimise pricing, streamline operations, and improve the user experience.