Optiml

# High-Level Overview

Optiml is a Swiss AI-powered software company that helps real estate asset managers and investors optimize capital expenditure planning while reducing carbon emissions.[1][3] The company has developed what it calls "Real Estate Decision Intelligence" software—a category distinct from traditional ESG reporting tools—that analyzes building portfolios to identify cost-effective renovation strategies that simultaneously lower CO₂ emissions and meet regulatory compliance requirements.[2][4]

The platform serves a critical gap in an industry still largely dependent on manual spreadsheet-based workflows and expensive sustainability consultants.[1][2] By automating the analysis of renovation scenarios across large asset portfolios, Optiml enables faster, data-driven investment decisions that align financial returns with climate goals. The company targets real estate companies, asset managers, investors, and consultancies across Europe and the US, operating in a market facing urgent regulatory pressure—including EU directives requiring all new buildings to be zero-emission by 2030.[1]

# Origin Story

Optiml emerged from academic research at ETH Zürich, Switzerland's leading technical university. Co-founder and CEO Evan Petkov developed the foundational technology as an engineering PhD student at SusTec, the university's sustainability research group, where he met co-founder and Chief Technology Officer Jordi Campos.[4] Rather than remaining in academia, the team recognized that the real estate industry's decarbonization challenge represented a massive commercial opportunity—one that required not just better algorithms but a scalable software product.

The company closed a $4 million pre-seed round led by BitStone Capital in late 2025, with plans to reach a second close within months and launch a seed round before 2026.[4] This early traction reflects both the urgency of the problem and investor confidence in the founding team's ability to execute. By early 2026, Optiml was planning to grow to approximately 20 people, with its core technology and product teams based in Zurich and satellite offices potentially opening in Munich and London.[4]

# Core Differentiators

• Optimization-based AI approach: Rather than generic ESG scoring, Optiml uses optimization algorithms to model buildings and show asset managers precisely how to renovate cost-effectively while minimizing CO₂ emissions.[4] This grounds recommendations in economic decision-making, not abstract sustainability metrics.

• Portfolio-scale analysis: The software analyzes entire asset portfolios across multiple ESG and regulatory data points in minutes—a process that traditionally required months of manual work and external consultants.[1][2]

• Dual optimization: Optiml uniquely positions cost and CO₂ as interconnected variables in investment planning, rather than treating sustainability as a separate compliance layer.[4] This appeals to asset managers whose primary fiduciary duty is financial returns.

• Regulatory anticipation: The platform continuously monitors changing regulatory and market data to ensure portfolios remain compliant with evolving standards like Energy Performance Certificates (EPCs).[1]

• Proven impact: Early data suggests users can achieve 10-70% CO₂e emission reductions depending on the asset (30% average), with potential cumulative global savings of ~50 megatons by 2030.[1] The company won the 2024 ULI Europe PropTech Innovation Challenge and 2024 ZIA PropTech of the Year awards.[3]

# Role in the Broader Tech Landscape

Optiml is positioned at the intersection of three powerful trends: regulatory tightening, investor demand for climate risk assessment, and the digitalization of real estate operations.[1][2]

The real estate sector accounts for approximately 40% of global emissions and requires a 300% increase in renovation rates to achieve net-zero targets.[2] However, climate-related transitional risks remain inadequately priced into real estate investment decisions, creating both a market failure and an opportunity for intelligence software.[1] Regulators are closing this gap through mandatory disclosure requirements and building performance standards, forcing asset managers to move beyond spreadsheets.

Simultaneously, institutional investors are demanding better data on climate-related financial risks in real estate portfolios—a need that traditional ESG consultants cannot scale to meet.[1] Optiml's software infrastructure addresses this by automating what was previously a bespoke, labor-intensive process. By establishing "Real Estate Decision Intelligence" as a distinct software category (rather than generic ESG reporting), Optiml is helping define how the industry will operationalize decarbonization at scale.

The company's influence extends beyond its direct customers: by proving that cost optimization and emissions reduction can be algorithmically aligned, Optiml is reshaping how the real estate industry thinks about the relationship between financial performance and climate impact.

# Quick Take & Future Outlook

Optiml is solving a problem that will only become more urgent: how to retrofit a massive, aging building stock while meeting tightening regulations and investor expectations. The company's academic pedigree, early market validation, and clear product-market fit position it well to capture significant share in a nascent but rapidly growing category.

The path forward involves scaling from early adopter customers to broader European coverage, then entering the US market—a sequence that requires both technical depth (to maintain product sophistication) and go-to-market execution (to reach asset managers at scale).[4] Success will depend on whether Optiml can remain genuinely focused on investment decision-making rather than drifting toward generic ESG compliance software, and whether it can build the sales and customer success infrastructure needed to serve large, complex real estate organizations.

If Optiml executes on its roadmap, it could become the operating system for real estate decarbonization—the software layer that translates climate science and regulatory requirements into actionable capital allocation decisions. In a sector where trillions of dollars in assets must be retrofitted over the next decade, that's a consequential position to occupy.