Is Deepki following Asuene and also rolling up the ESG/sustainability data market?

Summer slowdown? Not here - there’s another DEAL DESK to unpack, along with all of the other news from the world of smart buildings and Building OpTech.

This issue covers:

• Two acquisitions for Deepki, we unpack this and more in our new DEAL DESK.

• A quick review of Asuene’s big new round.

• All the other product launches and funding rounds of note.

• A preview of our update to a 2018 piece investigating energy management software vendor scale and growth; showing significant changes in the leaderboard.

Before we jump in, did you see our poll? We’re interested in your take on what “AI native” really means to you.

We’d love more feedback in advance of a second poll question going out in a few days. So far, about half of the poll respondents view “AI native” as a marketing term.

ASUENE secured $87 million in Series D funding led by Decarbonization Partners, bringing its total funding to $161 million and supporting international M&A, AI and product development, and expansion across global sustainability markets.

Aamidor Consulting lens: Asuene’s funding raised now rivals Deepki and Measurabl. The firm already has done more M+A than those two firms. Though, as we analyze below, Deepki is quickly catching up with 3 acquisitions in 2026. Asuene hasn’t entered the US market as directly, other than the N Zero acquisition (which is specifically called out in this press release), It is fair to expect more focus on North America given this press release (and more acquisitions).

Asuene is not focused exclusively on real estate and buildings, with the fundraising press release noting a goal to “establish its platform as the global standard for enterprise sustainability management and the de facto global standard for manufacturing supply chains.” Daikin did join this round, though Daikin is a major manufacturer in addition to being a HVAC supplier. Asuene is another well-funded, growing acquirer to watch.

Paid newsletter subscribers have access to all of the relevant deals of the past month.

Paid subscribers get the full digest: every relevant acquisition, funding round, partnership, product launch, and market signal, every two weeks.

In this issue, the complete, un-redacted view of market developments in the ecosystem includes:

• Funding rounds: 7 innovators announcing new capital raises, including AGent, LevelTen, metr, and more.

• Product Launches: 7 firms announcing new offerings, including JCI, R Zero, VergeSense, Kode Labs and Noda.

Total Ecosystem Moves Tracked This Issue: 14 signals

Deepki, a French-based ESG data management platform, made two acquisitions in recent weeks, bringing their total acquisition count to 5. The firm was started in 2014, raised money in 2016, 2019 and had a very large round in 2022. Over that time it has expanded its scale across commercial real estate firms throughout the world, while also offering new adjacent capabilities and services. Not as well known in the US, the firm appears to have growth intentions in North America as well as other geographies. Given these acquisitions, it also sees adjacent technology and services as a key to its growth.

ESG data management as a category has been relatively easier to scale than some detailed data-driven smart building solutions. While smart building solutions might be mid-hundreds of millions of square feet deployed (as a best-case scenario), ESG platforms can have billions of square feet under management. Of course, they use less granular data and are easier to deploy. For example, an ESG reporting platform may only require monthly utility bill data for each individual building (e.g., 3-5 data points per building per month). Compare that to a smart building solution that can connect to hundreds or thousands of data points, per building, with 15 minute granularity.

This also means that ESG data management is a reliable entry point for more data-rich offerings due to this ease of deployment, and because it remains relatively sticky (like most of the solutions in our industry). As long as the sales process can extend to new teams that don’t already have reasonable alternative, ESG data management looks like an effective tip of the spear or beachhead offering. These acquisitions appear to follow this strategy.

And Measurabl took this approach when it bought Hatch Data in 2022. And, Deepki’s moves are similar - growing share of wallet and getting deeper into the building’s operations. We expect this approach to continue - it appears to be working for Deepki. (And peers, such as Asuene.)

Deepki has grown beyond just Europe, with a lighter presence in the US and other international locations. Deepki says it has clients across 90 countries. Moreover, there has been significant growth in key metrics such as number of clients, value of assets under management, employee headcount, etc. And, while initially raising a few smaller rounds of funding, the firm had a massive 150M EUR round in 2022.

We’re typically focused on total square footage metrics because that is a useful way to validate TAM and estimate solution penetration plus available white space. In fact, this was a core data point used in our Capital Efficiency research (which is being updated for the fall).

But, in the case of Deepki, there’s also another story: the firm has been steadily expanding its offering surface area (organically and inorganically) and growing its share of wallet. In fact, while the firm’s overall square footage under management count hasn’t changed that much since 2022, the firm has provided other metrics that indicate significant growth.

There’s much more to Smart Building Insight; paid subscribers can continue for the complete issue, including the full deal coverage, company analysis, and broader market implications. There are also many more relevant deals in our digest below.

Additionally, see this page for a copy and paste approval request to expense SBI.