The Danish startup Woodsense, which aims to promote the green transition in the construction industry with an intelligent sensor solution, has raised a major million investment.
Since 2019, the startup Woodsense has been working to reduce the construction industry’s carbon footprint using a sensor solution that enables stakeholders to catch moisture damage as it occurs in construction.
“The sensor measures wood moisture, temperature and humidity in wooden elements and compares the measurements with local weather data. By analysing the collected data, our platform can detect and alert on leaks or conditions that could lead to mould and rot. In this way, it is possible to prevent moisture damage and reduce resource wastage in the construction industry, which are precisely the major barriers we see preventing people from using wood as a building material,” explains Jeppe Rasmussen, founder and CEO of Woodsense.
And it is precisely this concept that has attracted a number of prominent investors, including Keystones and DanBAN (Danish Business Angels), who have invested a total of DKK 2.6 million in Woodsense.
With the new capital, Woodsense will strengthen its presence and establish itself in the other Scandinavian markets, where it currently has more than 1000 sensors in Denmark, Norway, Sweden and Finland.
“We are experiencing strong interest from Swedish and Norwegian players who already have extensive experience in building in wood. In addition to consolidating Woodsense on the Danish market, we will seriously scale up on the other Nordic markets in 2022, where we can see a great potential in sensor technology,” explains Jeppe Rasmussen, founder and CEO of Woodsense.
Wood construction is part of the solution
It is the company’s focus on promoting timber construction that has caught the attention of Michael Rasmussen, founder of purpose@heart. That’s why he’s invested in Woodsense.
“Timber construction is a mandatory part of the solution to global warming when we need to reduce CO2 embedded in buildings, and Woodsense has developed an important component to monitor timber construction and timber buildings so that we can confidently choose timber-based constructions. As the demand for wood-based construction for modern smart buildings grows, Woodsense will become as natural a part of the building as the oil lamp was in your old diesel car,” he says.
Because intelligent digital solutions and monitoring of building elements in particular have opened up a proactive approach to quality assurance of building efficiency and quality in the future.
“Although our buildings represent significant invested capital and ongoing costs, over time we have had remarkably low attention to, or at least relatively unskilled methods of, monitoring their health and condition. With IoT, wireless sensors and artificial intelligence/machine learning, we finally have the ability to monitor them proactively, and correct before a symptom causes damage to the building or occupants,” explains Michael Rasmussen.
More investors have reinvested
Woodsense has welcomed a number of new investors in the new year including Lars Bonde Lindberg, CEO of Stenklint, Michael Rasmussen, founder of purpose@heart and Karsten John Hjarsø from Hjarsø Invest.
In addition, a reinvestment from members of Keystones and investors from DanBAN. This is partly due to the company’s potential to scale internationally.
“More and more houses are being built in wood, and Woodsense has a technology that prevents moisture damage while creating security for the occupant. There is no similar solution in other countries, so there is great international potential and Woodsense is therefore very scalable,” says Per Andersen, member of the board of Woodsense and Keystone investor
With new and existing investors on board, Woodsense hopes to drive the green transformation in the construction industry.
“Construction accounts for about 40% of total CO2 emissions in Denmark, and since wood stores CO2, it makes sense to think about the material in construction to a greater extent than we do at present,” explains Jeppe Rasmussen.
The company currently has seven employees.
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