Like many immigrants, the New York City skyline was one of the first sights young brothers Eddie and Etrit Demaji saw when they arrived in the United States more than 20 years ago. They and their families fled violence in their homeland of Kosovo, but they still remember the view as the plane flew over them.
“The first building we saw was the Empire State Building,” Etritt recalls.
The Demaji family soon settled in Detroit, where the brothers completed their education and founded various companies, including the state-of-the-art Kode Labs, which integrates and automates various systems in commercial buildings, including the Empire State Building.
“That's the American dream,” Ettrit said.
When the Dhemaji brothers founded Kode in 2017, they aimed to bring building management into the cloud era. They digest data from various connected parts of a building's operations, such as HVAC controls, fire alarms, elevators, occupancy sensors, and EV chargers, and deploy them in ways that maximize efficiency. We have begun developing a series of software to control this. system's. Kode claims to be able to communicate with over 130 different systems.
The brothers liken this to an operating system integrating architectural systems, much like a computer operating system integrates various circuit boards.
“What we're trying to do is take data, normalize it, index it, and use that data to build applications on top of it, making the operating system more useful and energy efficient, while also It's about creating a great experience,” Eddy said. Tech Crunch.
Commercial buildings may seem like clean neighbors, but they produce 16 percent of all carbon pollution in the United States, according to the EPA. The way many facilities operate is not only environmentally harmful, but also financially unsound.
Commercial buildings are currently full of inefficiencies that can be addressed through automation. In the process, owners will not only reduce their carbon emissions, but also save a significant amount of cash. According to Project Drawdown, when automation is introduced globally between 2020 and 2050, carbon dioxide will be reduced from 9.5 billion tons to 14 billion tons, and owners expect that at least 2.3 trillion tons of carbon dioxide will be reduced. Potential savings of $.
Kode has also developed a variety of applications to run on its platform, allowing customers to monitor energy usage, track carbon emissions, and monitor water consumption. Not only do these help contain costs, but some of the data is required to comply with laws in various cities, including New York City. In New York City, Local Law 97 requires buildings larger than 25,000 square feet to reduce their carbon emissions by the end of the decade.
“With all the goals and laws in place in so many different places and regions, they have no choice but to continue down this path,” Ettrit said.
Etrit says its software is already used by building managers and owners on five continents, and its customers include Fortune 100 companies and higher education institutions. The company has been profitable since day one, he added. Edi said customer churn is “zero percent” and annual recurring revenue has increased 200% each of the past three years.
Edi said Kode's business model is similar to Salesforce's, with customers first paying a negotiated implementation fee based on the size of their real estate portfolio, then the number of square feet under management and the customer's choice. You pay a recurring fee based on the number of applications. Use.
Kode has grown significantly since raising an $8 million Series A in 2022, with over 40 employees in Detroit, over 150 in Kosovo, and several in other countries.
Sensing an opportunity to grow quickly, Kode recently raised $30 million in Series B funding, TechCrunch has learned exclusively. The round was led by Maverick Private Equity, with participation from I Squared Capital and Telus Ventures. The startup plans to use the funding to expand its app market and further develop its use of AI to optimize building operations.