About five months after raising $15 million, PassiveLogic, which provides a platform for autonomously controlling building systems, has raised another $15 million in an “off-round” strategic investment from Nvidia’s venture arm, nVentures. secured the dollar. The new funding brings PassiveLogic’s total funding above his $80 million mark, and CEO Troy Harvey told TechCrunch that he’ll grow the Utah-based company’s headcount from 100 to 140 over the next year. He said it would be put in to expand.
Given that PassiveLogic has not yet released their product to the general public, this investment is a sign of great faith in PassiveLogic (although a beta is planned for later this year). Nvidia probably won because of PassiveLogic’s go-to-market strategy. The strategy has earned him the first two-year start-up contractual commitment of a sales and distribution partner who plans to include his PassiveLogic platform in construction and retrofit projects.
Mohamad Siddeek, head of nVentures, said in an emailed statement: “We are delighted to support a world-class team with deep industry and technology expertise as they prepare to launch highly differentiated solutions for their first customers.”
Harvey founded PassiveLogic in 2016 with Jeremy Fillingim. Jeremy Fillingim was previously a partner at Mote Systems, where he designed a touchscreen universal remote control. Harvey He is the former CEO of Heliocentric. Heliocentric is an engineering firm that works with clients to design ‘next generation’ buildings.
Running on Nvidia’s Jetson computing platform, PassiveLogic’s services use a combination of sensors, software and on-premises devices to work with traditional building systems. This software allows the customer to create a system model from her 3D drawings or scans. This model is used to generate a physics-based “digital twin” that predicts how the building’s equipment will interact. Based on data from the digital twin, PassiveLogic makes decisions regarding the control and management of real-world building systems.
Image credit: passive logic
“According to our research, the largest use case for generalized autonomy is buildings, which make up 25% of the global economy,” Harvey said in an email interview with TechCrunch. “Unlike a car, each building is a one-time thing and has a completely custom need for autonomous control. There is a possibility that it will be stolen, and that is a big deal.”
Beyond the aforementioned capabilities, PassiveLogic automatically structures, labels, and fuses building data into ontologies that can be consumed by third-party cloud apps. Responding to privacy questions, Harvey claims that all of PassiveLogic’s computing and storage happens at the edge, and that data (from sensors, etc.) is maintained on a separate intranet with no access to the rest of his IT infrastructure. Did.
“To reach the future of real estate, we need a digital platform that aggregates building data and allows building managers to customize automation controls and act in real time,” Harvey said. “[T]The PassiveLogic platform bridges the chasm between IT and operational technology within the enterprise, supporting a workflow that recognizes that purchasing decisions for building controls are almost always made by the contractor who installs the control, rather than the C-level. increase. “
PassiveLogic’s current focus is on buildings and building infrastructure, but Harvey believes the company’s technology can also be applied to other control systems, such as energy grids, logistics and supply chain facilities. The long-term plan is to adapt PassiveLogic’s products to wider markets, including the utilities and networking sectors.
Competitors in this space include Honeywell, which recently launched an AI-powered building control system, and HVAC management startups BrainBox and 75F. There is also Mesa, a platform from Sidewalk Labs, designed to help commercial building operators optimize their existing climate control systems.
