Product launches, conference season wrap, more small commercial controls
Smart Building Insight - Fundraising and Product Launches - October 2025 from Aamidor Consulting
Letter from the Editor
We’re deep into conference season, and the sprint to the end of the year. But, it’s time for another issue, this one focused on product launches, new fundraising activity, and new investment funds.
We’re changing the order a bit on this one, to bring some of the key features to the top. And, we’re unlocking them for all subscribers - enjoy!.
Let’s get right to the issue, which includes:
A review of a few of the smaller (but mighty!) conferences that we’ve recently attended.
We also continue our analysis of the small building controls opportunity, focusing on the market opportunity based on a bottom up view of the owners of retail, restaurant, and grocery / c store businesses.
A couple notable funding rounds, with news from Johnson Controls (which made a data center related investment), Recurve and a number of smaller deals.
Product launches, featuring Carrier, Trane, ABB, Schneider, Wattsense (Siemens), Novant, Budderfly, Neeve and others. (A lot of launches to report this issue.)
New fund formation rounds: Gemspring, Energy Impact Partners (EIP), and Brookfield.
In particular, there are some notable data center-related news items. And, it’s a pretty long issue. Please enjoy, and reach out if you have and question or comments.
A housekeeping item - we are starting to book projects through the end of the year and into 2026 - please reach out if you think you will need our help. We’d be happy to talk, but please get in touch soon! From fractional head of product to commercial due diligence projects for investors, our capabilities are wide within smart buildings product and market strategy.
Aamidor Consulting Client Spotlight
One core area of expertise is our ability to help international firms chart a path into the US market. Over the past few weeks we’ve been working with one such firm, which is starting to plan its US market entry. We’re helping the firm identify product gaps that should be added to the roadmap, understand the competitive landscape, and begin to prioritize channels to market. This effort is helping the firm plan for US market entry in the coming months.
This newsletter is a market wrap up and analysis of the smart buildings industry. If the email was forwarded to you, sign up to receive it directly.
Market Analysis: On Conferences
We’re often asked which events one should attend in our industry. And, since we are in the thick of conference season, it is a good time to check in on the state of conferences and share some thoughts on a few specific events we’ve recently attended.
On conference recommendations: The answer varies - for investors, Blueprint is excellent. To meet a lot of owners and operators with a wide real estate technology lens (but especially among corporates and commercial RE), Realcomm is great. And, there are plenty of events focused on specific industries (hospitals) or roles (facility management professionals). Moreover, some events are pretty small - IMN sustainability events tend to be intimate, while AHR can be overwhelming without a plan. And yes, there are simply too many events to attend - we’re selective because there’s more to do than just networking and marketing! That said, most events serve a purpose, so finding the right events given your goals is critical.
And, we’re just back from three great events in the past two weeks - none of them precisely fit into those buckets noted above (other than both being a bit smaller and more intimate). They’re also a bit newer, so we want to provide a little lens into each (and hope to see you at one of them next year!)
→ NexusCon is an extension of the Nexus Community, and focuses on education and a “no sales” approach (while still bringing together solution providers and buyers/users). The event grew significantly since 2024’s inaugural run, and continued with some unique approaches: every attendee is placed in a pod with a dozen or so fellow attendees, the event hosts a demo stage running during key break periods to enable attendees to see real features and real software from vendors, in addition to a number of deep and honest panels and discussions about the state of the industry. We’re looking to see how the team improves in year three! We also love the hike in our hometown of Boulder. This year Joe brought his 6 year old along, as an afterschool activity. He was “storming up the mountain” in the words of one fellow hiker.
Also, Nexus really is a community. Case in point: a number of vendors noted the value of networking with other peer firms that have had the same growth and scaling issues. Comparing notes, learning from slightly more mature vendors - all useful.
→ DERVOS is also a newer event, organized by the DER Task Force, with a focus on demand flexibility. This covers a wide range of industries and topics - grid scale to behind the meter energy developments, across various energy types. The community here is strong, with many local events in places like New York City and Toronto - and it’s a bit outside the core strike zone of smart buildings (but still worth it).
But, we ’re very bullish on demand flexibility in commercial buildings, which was a peripheral topic at this event. DERVOS is a good place to dig into this and learn more about emerging opportunities. One great point from the event, which sounds familiar: (not a direct quote):
“Customers don’t care about what a VPP <virtual power plant> is, they care about minimizing their bills.”
We’d argue that in commercial buildings, they care about minimizing bill uncertainty - consistency is good. But, with energy costs going up, that is becoming harder to do if you treat energy usage as a steady state (more on that in the coming months.) So, this means that there is a stronger key driver for smart building technology on the horizon - but it’s still built around delivering value and differentiating that value from vendor peers. It’s not about selling a product, or feature, or even a technology future. In that way, distributed energy resources (DERs) have something in common with smart buildings. (And, this was a big theme at NexusCon, too.)
Another compelling stat which puts the demand flexibility point in perspective: New York City hits about 12 GW at its peak, but the grid only hits that peak for 20 hours or so a year. Most of the time, demand is around 5-6GW. There are very few times in which the entire grid is operating at its peak (and hence the opportunity for demand flexibility). And, note that some hyperscalers are building 1 GW data centers - this is a massive amount of energy.
→ And, third (but not least): The Smart Data for Energy Summit from the Ascentis Strategies Institute is another event that you may want to have on your radar. Readers of this newsletter will recognize the sponsors and exhibiting vendors, but will make new connections amongst attendees: we met a number of facility leaders for various campuses - universities, hospitals, government, and others. And, we differentiate larger campuses from larger portfolios, since campuses tend to be geographically constrained and have core faculty teams that can manage the whole portfolio. These facilities can be compelling clients - and they typically don’t compete with peers, meaning that there can be a powerful network effect from word of mouth recommendations. While one university is happy to share details on vendors to their peers, commercial real estate firms (or corporations) may be less interested. This event offered a lot of candid conversations in a group setting during the panels and presentations. Joe provided a presentation at this one, focused on how to buy smart building technologies. (more on that presentation in a future issue)
One interesting point made by some of the owners and operators: During a procurement or pre-procurement exercise, it is important for the vendors to learn more about the buyers/users. And, a few buyers/users did note that this could be done more effectively. Implied in this point: a standard sales pitch likely won’t work for many buyers in our market - there needs to be some alignment for each individual user/buyer.
Please reach out if you are interested in having our team at your event (presenting, moderating a panel, recording podcasts during the event, etc). Also reach out if you are trying to decide which events are best for your firm and its goals.
Market Analysis: Small commercial buildings (part 2)
We’re including some more detail on our recent piece about the small commercial building opportunity - building on the initial market opportunity discussion a few weeks ago. The full article (and associated data files) will be made available to subscribers in the coming weeks (as we conclude the analysis).
The last piece highlighted some key takeaways among smart buildings: A lot of them are very small (under 5,000 sq ft buildings, slightly larger than a home), and do not have BAS - but many do not heat/cool their floorspace, among other factors.
Here we highlight more TAM (total addressable market) dynamics - for three core building types that have many small buildings: retail sites, restaurants, and grocery and convenience stores (the last is a combined category in CBECS).
These three building types are interesting because:
A lot of the buildings are small (under 10K sq ft)
There are larger companies that control a large share of the sites (think McDonald’s or Walgreens or 7-11).
We have some data from the early 2020s on how many sites these corporations have, and combined it with CBECS to better characterize the market . Note that these three types of buildings total up to about 960,000 sites, 1/6 of the 6 million commercial buildings in the US. Therefore, there are many small commercial buildings that are NOT in one of these categories.
Quick summary:
Restaurants - 286,000 sites
276,000 are small (under 10K sq ft) - almost 97 percent of all buildings in the category
212,000 are owned by the top 250 restaurant chains (74 percent)
While only 17 percent of these sites have a BAS, 34 percent have a programmable thermostat. It seems that upgrading from programmable tstats to smart building offerings may be the most ripe upgrade opportunity here.
72 percent of these sites have package units to provide comfort (though, they may have package units AND other types of HVAC - though likely not chillers!)
Supermarkets/C Stores - 163,000 sites
147,000 sites are small - 90 percent of all buildings in the category
95,000 are owned by the top 50 chains (58 percent)
23 percent of these sites have a BAS, 25 percent have a programmable thermostat.
58 percent of these sites have rooftop units.
Note, many supermarkets are not small, but more locations are small. For example, in 2021, Dollar General had 17,00 sites, Dollar Tree had 15,500 sites, and Kroger (larger sites) had just 2.700.
Retail - 517,000 sites
286,000 sites are small - 55 percent of all buildings in the category
92,000 are owned by the top ~50 chains (just 18 percent)
22 percent of these sites have a BAS, 6 percent have a smart thermostat, and 21 percent have a programmable tstat.
74 percent of these sites have rooftop units
A much smaller share of these sites are small, as there are plenty of big box retailers that may still buy small commercial controls.
So, this is an interesting space for small commercial smart building solutions because there are a limited number of target clients - targeting the top 250 restaurant chains gets to nearly 75 percent of all of the sites (however, many are franchises, so there are actually more target buyers). While the largest commercial real estate firms tend to control less than 1 percent of the tenant occupied office space, this is one sector that simply isn’t as fragmented as other building categories. Moreover, a lot of the sites don't have BAS - and may not need them, but should consider upgrading from programmable thermostats.
Our full analysis will include a deeper look at the state of these buildings, a review of the competitive landscape (plus an estimate of how many buildings already have deployed a solution), among other considerations. We’ll also build up the value proposition and conclude with our call on how many buildings are viable targets for small commercial controls solutions (it won’t be close to 90 percent of all buildings, we can assure you!). Stay tuned for more to come!
Aamidor Consulting provides product and GTM expertise to the real estate industry, with a focus on innovators with solutions that decarbonize and digitize commercial buildings. Our typical clients are startups, capital allocators, and industry incumbents - elevating the product and GTM approach and helping to make educated investment decisions. In addition this leading newsletter, we have an unrivaled network of owners and operators and a deep bench of consulting partners. See a summary of our past projects and also a description of our consulting services for more details on how we can help.
Smart building product launches and related announcements:
Phoenix Energy Technologies expanded its platform to include comprehensive asset lifecycle management for HVAC, refrigeration, and lighting systems, introducing new solutions such as HVAC IQ, Refrigeration IQ, Technician View, and HVAC vendor management to help multi-site operators reduce costs, improve uptime, and enhance sustainability.
Our take: There has been lots of activity from the firm, and this fits into our view that CMMS/facility management and building controls/smart buildings are converging. Though, as a few readers have noted - these are different solutions, bought by different teams, with different budgets. We still see continued innovation in the category.
Also in the multisite / small commercial space, Fexa launched FexaAI, an embedded intelligence layer for its facilities and HVAC/R management platform, designed to streamline work order creation with natural language processing and boost efficiency for multi-site operators in retail, grocery, and restaurant industries.
Our take: Similar to some of what Phoenix launched, but more from the CMMS side. It’s true that distributed portfolios have significant work order management needs (a lot of work orders, a need to triage, teams that themselves are distributed). And, our view is that AI tools can help significantly with that triage and optimizing the data flow.
A few notable items from Carrier: First, the firm rebranded its award-winning BluEdge Command Centers as Carrier Customer Command Centers to highlight its customer-first focus and expand support for energy efficiency, uptime, and predictive service across more than 32,000 buildings worldwide.
