Hazelview Ventures, milemark•capital, and Newlab back Lamarr.AI in its establishment as the pioneers of end-to-end building envelope diagnostics and retrofitting solutions.
ATLANTA, Oct. 16, 2024 /CNW/ – Lamarr.AI, a startup born from collaborative research efforts at MIT, Georgia Tech, and Syracuse University, has announced the successful completion of a $1.1 million pre-seed funding round. The round is led by Hazelview Ventures, the VC arm of leading Canadian real estate firm Hazelview Investments. Supporting the round are milemark•capital, Newlab, Georgia Tech’s Venture Fund and MIT’s SBXi Fund. This investment will allow the company to productize and scale bleeding-edge tools that eliminate carbon emissions while reducing building maintenance & ownership costs.
Lamarr.AI scanning visualization (CNW Group/Lamarr.AI)
“The interest from real estate companies in what we’ve built has been incredibly rewarding after perfecting the technology for nearly a decade in our lab,” said Tarek Rakha, CEO of Lamarr.AI and Associate Professor at Georgia Tech’s School of Architecture. “We are leveraging advances in drones, thermal imaging, and AI to autonomously detect building defects at scale, and with unprecedented accuracy. This innovation is enabling property owners to address faults before they become expensive headaches or environmentally unsustainable threats.”
The startup has already worked with numerous building owners and facilities managers to save more than $1M in engineering and construction costs by automatically identifying problems like deteriorated window seals and leaky roofs, in addition to helping effectively plan and scope large building envelope retrofits. The use of novel AI to automate the analysis of thermal images captured by drones enables the company to provide actionable insights from building envelope inspections significantly faster, cheaper, and more accurately than manual audits. Further, the team can quantify the impact of defects on energy loss through whole Building Energy Modeling (BEM), allowing for ROI modeling that drives capex decision-making.
“We’re excited to lead Lamarr.AI’s first pre-seed round,” said Roger Poirier, Co-Founder of Hazelview Ventures. “We back startups that can directly drive value in Hazelview’s core real estate business. Lamarr.AI’s innovative inspection service has already had an impact on our operations and is an excellent example of the types of new approaches the industry needs to accelerate the journey to net zero in a financially sustainable way.” Sebastian Barriga, Co-founder of milemark•capital –who connected with the Lamarr.AI team at MIT over two years ago– added: “Lamarr.AI has developed game-changing technology capable of unlocking efficiency gains at scale, which will effectively reshape how we design and operate building performance and energy use.”
About Lamarr.AI
Lamarr.AI is pioneering automated solutions for building envelope diagnostics and retrofitting. Leveraging drones, thermal imaging, and AI-based analytics, we make detecting, diagnosing, and fixing envelope defects faster, cheaper, and more accurate than traditional methods. We work with building owners and facilities managers to reduce emissions, energy costs, and long-term maintenance expenses.
For more information, visit www.lamarr.ai
SOURCE Lamarr.AI