The conference rooms of European asset managers are lined with climate disclosures. What they lack, increasingly, are actionable plans to actually green their buildings.
Optiml, an ETH Zurich spin-off that emerged from a decade of academic research, is betting that the gap between ESG reporting and capital deployment represents a lucrative—and urgent—market opportunity. On February 17, the Zurich-based startup closed an €8 million seed round co-led by KOMPAS VC and Planet A Ventures, with BitStone Capital, The Bau Ventures, Innovation Endeavors, and a roster of real estate and AI executives joining in.
The financing arrives at a peculiar moment for European commercial real estate. Property valuations remain depressed, refinancing pressures are mounting, and yet regulatory deadlines are accelerating. The revised Energy Performance of Buildings Directive mandates zero-emission standards for new construction by 2028 for public buildings, 2030 for everything else. Asset managers are staring down billions in retrofit capital expenditure—and very few good tools to sequence it intelligently.
Enter what Optiml calls "Real Estate Decision Intelligence," a category the company is essentially inventing. The platform positions itself as the connective tissue between climate disclosure and actual project execution, ingesting portfolio data and running optimization algorithms to spit out asset-level capital plans, refinancing readiness reports, and pathways aligned with CRREM decarbonization targets.
It's a decidedly unsexy pitch: enterprise software for building retrofits. But the numbers suggest asset managers are listening. Optiml reports processing over €12 billion in assets under management, with clients claiming 25 percent reductions in capital expenditure and 80 percent time savings compared to the Excel-driven alternative.
A Climate Fund Convergence
The investor lineup reads like a roll call of European climate tech. KOMPAS VC, which closed a €150 million Fund II in April 2025, focuses on early-stage industrial decarbonization. Planet A Ventures raised a €160 million science-backed climate fund in February 2023 and has been in since Optiml's inception—the firm co-led the startup's initial ~$1.6 million pre-seed back in April 2023 alongside Innovation Endeavors, the Eric Schmidt-backed outfit that closed a $630 million Fund V last January.
BitStone Capital, the PropTech-focused VC that previously led Optiml's $4 million pre-seed extension in August 2024, returned for the seed. The Bau Ventures, a built-environment fund backed by Drees & Sommer and launched just last year, came in fresh.
The participation of Innovation Endeavors is worth noting. Schmidt's firm doesn't typically wade into niche European PropTech—its portfolio leans toward frontier AI and infrastructure. That it stayed in for a second round suggests Optiml's pitch extends beyond real estate into algorithmic decision-making at scale.
The Academic Roots
Optiml was founded in 2022 by Dr. Evan Petkov, Jordi Enric Campos Schweitzer, and Nico Dehnert, all of whom spent years at ETH Zurich before spinning out. Petkov completed his PhD there, and the platform draws heavily on optimization research conducted over more than a decade. The company now employs somewhere between 11 and 50 people—it hasn't disclosed exact headcount—across Zurich, Munich, and London.
The technical foundation matters here. Buildings account for roughly 40 percent of EU energy consumption and 36 percent of greenhouse gas emissions. Decarbonizing them isn't just about slapping solar panels on rooftops; it requires sequencing interventions across heating systems, insulation, façades, and grid connectivity in ways that minimize cost and maximize compliance with evolving regulations. That's an optimization problem, and Optiml's founders argue academic rigor gives them an edge over point-solution vendors.
Whether that edge translates into market dominance is another question. The PropTech graveyard is littered with companies that solved real problems but couldn't crack enterprise sales cycles. Optiml seems aware of this. In the two months leading up to the seed close, it announced a flurry of client wins: PATRIZIA in December 2025, Pension Fund of BEWAG, U.S.-based Longevity Partners. Then in January, Empira—a significant European player—selected Optiml to support its Transition-to-Green strategy, a high-profile validation.
The company also collected hardware: the 2024 ULI Europe PropTech Innovation Challenge, the ZIA PropTech of the Year Award, and a CHF 100,000 W.A. de Vigier Award. Trophies don't guarantee traction, but they signal credibility in a sector where procurement committees move slowly.
Where the Money Goes
Optiml plans to deploy the seed capital in predictable ways: accelerate enterprise adoption, expand product capabilities, extend runway. The company currently operates across more than 20 countries in Europe and the United States, with integrations into ESG data platforms like BuildingMinds—formalized through a partnership announced at MIPIM Cannes last March.
The real test will be whether Optiml can scale beyond early adopters. European asset managers are under pressure, yes, but enterprise software adoption in real estate remains glacial. The sector has historically underinvested in technology, and convincing portfolio managers to swap spreadsheets for algorithmic capital planning requires more than a compelling demo.
Still, the climate clock is ticking, and regulatory timelines don't care about procurement cycles. Optiml is betting that the gap between what building owners must do and what their current tools allow them to do is wide enough—and urgent enough—to build a substantial business. Whether that bet pays off may depend less on the elegance of the algorithms than on the company's ability to navigate the slow-moving machinery of institutional real estate.
For now, at least, the checks are clearing.
