Canadian firm Intelligent City has raised $30m to advance the sustainable urban housing industry using robotics and automation.

The funds will support the company’s automated design and manufacturing, which is on track to deliver over 2300 apartments. This technology can save up to half of life cycle costs, achieves ninety per cent carbon emissions reduction in buildings, and provide higher quality and performance than conventional methods.

With pressure mounting for cities to address affordable housing needs, decarbonise buildings and meet sustainability goals, the housing technology company raised C$22m, bringing the total capital invested in the company to $30m.

As one of the first companies in North America to apply automation and robotics to the design and manufacturing of prefabricated mass timber buildings, Intelligent City will use the funding to scale operations, commercialise its Platforms for Life (P4L) building technology, grow factory automation, and expand its footprint across and beyond Canada.

Earlier this year, the company completed testing of its building systems and is now verified to work within the new mass timber high-rise building codes in Canada and the USA.

“We are focused on revolutionising an industry that is notoriously slow to innovate while making a significant impact on our climate with lower carbon emissions from the construction and operations of buildings,” said Oliver Lang, CEO of Intelligent City. “By utilising green building strategies and patented technology to deliver affordable, mass-customisable urban housing, we can help cities to adapt more quickly as the needs of people and the planet evolve.”

By developing a flexible yet scalable technology and design platform, the company departs strongly from the construction industry’s typically fragmented and hierarchical design and construction processes. Focusing on a deep vertical integration of building systems, software, manufacturing automation and supply chain contracts, the company can help developers achieve nearly 100 per cent cost certainty, deliver 1.5 times the number of residential units on the same site compared with traditional methods, and realise savings of up to fifty per cent on life cycle costs per home.

The series A funding came from BDC Capital’s Cleantech Practice, Greensoil PropTech Ventures, UIT Growth Equity GP, Fulmer, and more than 30 independent investors, with government programmes and accelerators such as the Natural Resources Canada (NRCan) Investments in Forest Industry Transformation (IFIT) programme, the Sustainable Development Technology Canada (SDTC) start-up fund, and the Next Generation Manufacturing Supercluster (NGen) project funding. Fort Capital Partners acted as financial advisor and placement agent for the series A and seed rounds.

“Intelligent City’s technology is set to enable the future of the built world to be more climate-resilient by replacing emissions-intensive materials such as concrete and steel with a renewable material that naturally sequesters carbon,” said Matt Stanley, director of BDC Capital’s Cleantech Practice. “We are excited to support the team to accelerate the development and scale-up of its mass timber building system and advanced offsite manufacturing capabilities.”

Intelligent City’s end-to-end, product-based approach uses proprietary parametric software for design, construction cost estimation, carbon footprint confirmation, material quantifications, and precision manufacturing. At the same time, the company’s manufacturing technology brings automation to the prefabrication of building components. As a result, the company provides data on the life cycle and performance of the building before construction even begins.

“As prop-tech industry disruptors, we were excited by the combination of Intelligent City’s platform technology with prefabricated and modular mass timber products to radically speed up construction and dramatically reduce carbon emissions,” said Dana Goldman Szekely, senior principal with Greensoil PropTech Ventures.

Jamie James, managing partner at Greensoil PropTech Ventures, will join Intelligent City’s board of directors.

Combined with mass timber construction, Intelligent City uses the energy-efficiency standards of passive house design to achieve a ninety per cent carbon emissions reduction in its buildings. This concept uses building science principles to attain specific energy efficiency and comfort levels. It includes continuous insulation and air-tight seals, high-performing windows and doors, balanced heat- and moisture-recovery ventilation, and minimal space conditioning throughout the entire building.

Founded over a decade ago, Intelligent City offers clients integrated one-stop technology to design and pre-fabricate sustainable, net-zero, multi-family urban green buildings at better quality and lower costs for owners, operators and tenants.