Urbio Awarded with "Digital Shaper 2026" Title for Digitizing District Heating Network Planning

Urbio has been named a Bilanz Digital Shaper 2026 — a prestigeous title awarded by leading voices in the industry including Google, Huawei, Kudelski and Digital Switzerland. The award recognizes the 100 most impactful digital innovators — affirming the team's role at the forefront of AI-driven district heating network planning in Europe.

What the Award Means

The Bilanz Digital Shapers award is judged by a blue-chip jury spanning Switzerland's technology and industry landscape — including representatives from Digital Switzerland, Google Schweiz, Kudelski, Huawei, BILANZ, and PME, among others. Being selected by voices from Big Tech, cybersecurity, and Swiss industry confirms that Urbio's work is resonating well beyond the traditional energy and engineering community.

Built to Make the Energy Transition Move Faster

Urbio was founded six years ago based on the research by Sébastien Cajot and Nils Schüler, and with the observation that the energy transition was still largely undigitized. District heating networks are one of the most powerful levers for decarbonizing buildings at scale — but planning them has historically been slow, opaque, and resource-intensive.

"The simpler the design of low-emission infrastructure becomes, the faster momentum builds."

— Sébastien Cajot, CEO & Co-Founder, Urbio

Urbio's district heating planning software changes that equation. Energy planners, utilities, and public authorities can now explore city-scale scenarios — weighing trade-offs between costs, CO₂ targets, and resource use — in a fraction of the time a traditional study would require. The platform is currently expanding across Europe, where regulatory pressure and climate targets are making district heating network planning software an infrastructure priority in its own right.

As Sébastien Cajot, Urbio' CEO, puts it: "It is exciting to work at the intersection of two enormous opportunities — the decarbonization of buildings and the digitalisation of the energy sector." The Digital Shapers 2026 recognition is a milestone on that journey — and a signal to keep making the complex manageable.

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👉 Read the official feature here