Urbio Secures $2M in Oversubscribed Pre-seed Round to Accelerate The Energy Transition in Cities
- Randy Lamotte
- Sep 29, 2021
- 4 min read
Updated: Dec 16, 2025
From Academic Research to Market Leader in District Heating Planning
In a landscape where European cities race to decarbonize their energy systems, Urbio has emerged as a critical enabler of the energy transition. In September 2021, it closed an oversubscribed pre-seed round of $2 million, co-led by Wingman Ventures (now Founderful) and Contrarian Ventures.
The funding round, which also attracted follow-on investment from Urban Us (now Third Sphere) and angel backing from David Helgason (founder and former CEO of Unity Technologies), positions Urbio to scale its district heating network planning software across European markets. The investment fuels team expansion, accelerates product development, and supports commercial operations throughout the EU.
The Challenge: Outdated Tools for Critical Infrastructure
Energy utilities and district heating companies face a daunting challenge. As municipalities commit to ambitious net-zero targets, the infrastructure planning process remains stuck in the analog age. Energy planners typically wrestle with fragmented spreadsheets, disparate data sources, and manual design workflows that operate at the building scale—a process that's both time-intensive and error-prone.
For district heating network planning specifically, this bottleneck is particularly acute. Designing thermal infrastructure for entire neighborhoods or cities demands sophisticated spatial analysis, thermal load calculations, and economic modeling—tasks that traditional software for district heating planning struggles to handle efficiently.
Urbio's Solution: AI-Powered District Heating Planning Software
Urbio's platform, built on research conducted at Switzerland's climate-university EPFL, represents a fundamental shift in how energy infrastructure gets designed. The software reduces design time by a factor of ten, transforming processes that once took weeks into tasks completed in days or even hours.
Unlike legacy tools, Urbio's energy planning software consolidates scattered data sources into a unified platform. The technology enables energy engineers and planners to generate highly customized proposals—whether for a single building or an entire urban district—through streamlined, collaborative workflows. Among it's most used functionalities: district heating network planning and design.
The platform's capabilities extend beyond simple visualization. By integrating thermal demand modeling, network optimization algorithms, and techno-economic analysis, Urbio delivers the comprehensive toolkit that utilities and district heating companies need to accelerate infrastructure deployment.
Investor Confidence in Climate Tech Infrastructure
Urbio's investor syndicate signals strong market validation. Alex Stöckl, partner at Wingman Ventures, emphasized the team's execution capabilities:
"We've known Sébastien and his team for more than a year already and are highly impressed with their ability to build a product that their initial customers love. Without significant funding, the Urbio team has managed to build a strong commercial pipeline and hire strong candidates as the foundation of what we believe will be a global tone-setter in urban energy planning software."
Rokas Peciulaitis, managing partner at Contrarian Ventures, framed the investment within the broader decarbonization imperative:
"In order to reach ambitious net-zero goals, we really need to rethink our energy systems in cities around the world. Urbio's team has built a powerful product that is a must-have tool to accelerate the decarbonization of energy systems."
Both Stöckl and Peciulaitis joined Urbio's board of directors, bringing deep expertise in SaaS scaling and climate technology commercialization.
Strategic Growth Plans and Market Expansion
The $2 million in fresh capital enables Urbio to execute on three strategic priorities: team expansion to support growing customer demand, enhancement of the commercial product based on utility feedback, and rapid expansion of commercial activities across European Union markets where district heating infrastructure investment is accelerating.
Sébastien Cajot, Urbio's CEO, articulated the company's vision:
"Besides the capital that will support the growth of our team, we're thrilled to count on the extensive experience in software and climate tech of our investors, as well as far-reaching international networks. Joining forces with such forward-thinking people represents a giant leap forward for our company. This will let us reach customers faster and with a considerably better product that is up to the challenge of the energy transition."
Recognition and Momentum
Urbio's trajectory has not gone unnoticed. The startup earned recognition as one of the TOP 100 Swiss Startups 2021, validating its innovative approach to urban energy planning. The company previously participated in URBAN-X, a startup accelerator program jointly operated by Urban Us and MINI, which helped refine its go-to-market strategy and secure its first utility customers.
The Team Behind the Technology
Urbio was co-founded by three complementary leaders: Sébastien Cajot (CEO and product director), Nils Schüler (technical director), and Nicolas Sommer (business development director). The founding team combines deep technical expertise in energy systems with commercial acumen—a rare combination in the cleantech space that has proven crucial to the company's early traction with utilities and district heating operators.
Why This Matters for the Energy Sector
As European governments mandate the phase-out of fossil fuel heating systems and incentivize renewable district heating infrastructure, the demand for sophisticated planning tools will only intensify. Energy consultants, municipal energy departments, and utilities require software that can model complex scenarios, optimize network topologies, and justify infrastructure investments with robust financial analysis.
Urbio's approach—combining academic rigor with user-centered design—addresses this need precisely. For energy planners navigating the complexities of the energy transition, platforms like Urbio's represent not just productivity improvements but strategic enablers of climate action at scale.
Press contact
Sébastien Cajot
CEO and Co-founder
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