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Builtwins 1A
Equity
€148,750
total amount raised in round
149%
9 days
remaining
- Eligible for a tax reduction
DISCLAIMER
Every investment decision must be based on an examination of an exhaustive set of information provided by the entrepreneur on their online profile. Spreds only proceeds to a limited verification of this information and does not control the investment opportunity within this company. Spreds did not verify the extent to which the business plan is deemed realistic and does not intervene in determining the final terms of the investment, including the retained maximum valuation. Spreds will align itself with the financial terms negotiated with the co-investor(s).
Buildings waste a third of the energy they consume and users complain about lack of comfort. We resolve that.
Building users expect their environment to just work: the right temperature, the right air quality, without having to think about it. Yet even in new, high-tech buildings designed to be both sustainable and comfortable, occupants routinely experience discomfort.
This frustration increases due to high energy bills. Heating, ventilation and air-conditioning is the single largest energy load in almost every non-residential building, and almost none of it is optimally controlled. Most HVAC systems still run on static rules and reactive schedules set years ago, drifting further from optimality every season. The result is structural, invisible waste:
- Buildings account for roughly 40% of final energy consumption and 36% of energy-related CO₂ emissions in Europe.
- HVAC alone can represent up to half of a building's total energy use.
- Across the buildings Builtwins manages today, 20–40% of HVAC energy was simply wasted
Owners and operators have lived with this because the hidden cost of inefficiency is hard to detect, maintenance only happens reactively and there is a lack of qualified and experienced contractors in this field to resolve problems.
What we built
Builtwins developed a physics-based Model Predictive Control (MPC) software that takes over the control of a building's HVAC system in real time. Instead of reacting to what just happened, it predicts what the building will need — using a physics-based mathematical model of the building itself, weather forecasts, occupancy, and energy prices — and continuously computes the lowest-energy way to hit comfort targets hours ahead. The same model is used to detect anomalies in the system using excitation tests, which check that the HVAC components work as expected. Typically, 10% to 20% of tested actuators do not behave as designed, causing maintenance issues, discomfort and increased energy use.
The platform comes together as a small number of integrated components:
- Physics-based digital twin — a Modelica-derived model of each building's thermal behaviour, the engine's core differentiator versus generic data-driven tools.
- MPC optimisation engine — solves, every 15 minutes, the optimal control trajectory across heating, cooling and ventilation.
- BMS integration layer — connects to the existing Building Management System and writes back optimised set points, without rip-and-replace of hardware.
- Dashboards & ticketing & reports — savings, comfort, and CO₂ tracking, and follow-up of HVAC anomalies for facility teams, and ESG reporting
Why we're hard to copy
The engine is the product of 13–14 years of research at KU Leuven where co-founders Filip Jorissen and Damien Picard have done their PhD. The technology was licensed to Builtwins and further developed in the last 4 years into a commercial product. That head start matters because physics-based MPC is fundamentally different from the black-box, data-driven optimisation that most competitors sell. A physics model generalises to a new building in days rather than needing months of historical data, stays accurate as the building changes, and explains why it does what it does — which buyers and engineers trust. Replicating it is not a matter of more data; it is a matter of more than a decade of modelling science. The methodology has been demonstrated to a 600 room building including dehumidification and other complex systems, while methods used in active research often get stuck at only a few rooms and a single heat pump.
Proof
- 17 buildings live, totalling ~350,000 m² under active MPC management. Some of our clients: Facilitair Bedrijf, Cofinimmo, Sweco Belgium, Stad Geel, Stad Kortrijk, Fluvius, Mintus, Woonzorg Dijleland, ... .
- 50,000 m² and 600 rooms in one individual building.
- 0% churn to date — every building we have signed on is still with us.
- 1 to 3 years client ROI and 20–40% HVAC energy savings delivered in production.
- Clients systematically report comfort improvements
- Sweco partnership as an established channel into the engineering and building-services market.
The team
- Dr. Ir. Filip Jorissen — CTO & co-founder, PhD Mechanical Engineering - Energy & computer science.
- Dr. Ir. Damien Picard — COO & co-founder, PhD Mechanical Engineering - Energy modelling & control
- Steven De Laet — CEO, ex-founder & CEO InOpSys (exit 2024)
- Edouard Moens — CFO, ex-founder & CEO of Aerosint (exit 2021)
- Prof. Dr. Ir. Lieve Helsen — Advisor & shareholder, Vice Director KU Leuven Institute for Energy and Society
Where we are, and what's next
Builtwins has proven the technology in production, proven that clients stay, and proven the unit economics. The next phase is scale: growing the team and the installed base across Belgium, the Netherlands, and Western Europe while regulation turns building energy performance from a nice-to-have into a mandate.
Further developments to achieve this will situate on three major fronts:
Further developments to achieve this will situate on three major fronts:
- Develop a first agentic layer on top of the existing framework that simplifies and automates the model development work. A second agentic layer will access this digital twin and available measurements to automate fault diagnosis and serve as a virtual building management assistant.
- Existing Horizon Europe funded projects will develop a model calibration method to both improve model accuracy and thereby robustness, and serve as a building block to detect faults.
- The existing framework will be modernized to become more robust and scalable.
These developments will lower our own operational cost of monitoring and maintaining a building, and allow us to scale to a larger portfolio.
TAX SHELTER 45%
Investments in this company benefit from a 45% personal income tax reduction. Read more…A remaining amount of €351,250 is available for the Tax Shelter benefit.
Raise summary
| Crowd investments | €148,750 |
| Committed by others | €0 |
| Amount raised | €148,750 |
| Minimum round | €200,000 |
| Maximum round | €1,200,000 |
| Shares in the company (total round) | 21.818% |
| Pre-money valuation | €4,300,000 |
| Post-money valuation min. | €4,500,000 |
| Post-money valuation max. | €5,500,000 |