U.S. firm Cohesion, an early-stage smart building software-as-a-service company, announced that it has raised $6.5 million in seed funding to further invest in its platform, which helps commercial real estate operators integrate their buildings’ systems and enhance tenant experiences.
The startup said its application bridges the gap between siloed tenant-facing apps and legacy building engineering systems with the goal of delivering greater operating efficiency, better tenant experiences, and addressing real-time health and safety needs of all building occupants.
Led by Hyde Park Angels (HPA), the seed round also includes investments from Singapore-based multi-national real estate group, Frasers Property Group; Raj Gupta, Executive Chairman of ESD Global; Ken Griffin, Citadel founder and CEO; Michael Sacks, GCM Grosvenor CEO and chairman; global proprietary trading and investment firm CMT. As part of the investment, Steve Koch, the former Global Chair of M&A at Credit Suisse and HPA member, is joining Cohesion’s board of directors.
“COVID-19 has presented the commercial real estate industry with never-before-experienced pressure, forcing adaptation to reprioritized tenant needs of health and safety. Cohesion’s technology makes it much easier for owners and operators to meet this moment by equipping them with an all-in-one platform that predicts and adapts to their building’s environment and tenants’ needs,” said Thru Shivakumar, Cohesion CEO and co-founder. “With this funding in place, Cohesion will continue advancing building intelligence capabilities to unlock an entirely new class of buildings that are more flexible, resilient, and data-enabled,” Koch said.
“The real estate industry is evolving rapidly. For Frasers Property to respond with agility, we’re looking at leveraging data-driven technologies to better manage our multi-national real estate portfolio,” said Panote Sirivadhanabhakdi, Group CEO, Frasers Property Limited. “We believe investing in Cohesion’s solution enables us to realize a vision where building systems and workflows can be seamlessly connected in a centralized intelligent building platform and has the ability to help create a future of work experience. Whether it is helping to improve people’s well-being through effective air quality management, supporting a sustainability agenda, or potentially yielding some cost efficiencies, we believe the overall benefits will also help enhance a more connected user experience.”
Cohesion’s clients include The John Buck Company, Transwestern, Frasers Property, and Riverside Investment & Development.
Founded in August 2018 and headquartered in Chicago’s Central Business District, Cohesion is a spin-off venture of ESD, a Chicago-based global engineering design firm.
