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“From Håvard’s experience in the industry they decided to pivot to serving developers who then give the software to their in-house and external architects.
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“Initially they targeted architects directly, but realised that they have relatively small budgets,” recalls Michiel Kotting, who led the startup’s Series A round on behalf of Northzone.
That knowledge and those “failed attempts” span not only the Spacemaker CEO’s own background as an architect, but the path to product-market-fit and the technology itself. “They’re acquiring the mission we’re on, the way we work, the knowledge we have, all our failed attempts along the way… so it’s much more than just swallowing the product”. “They want to let Spacemaker be Spacemaker they’re not acquiring our product, they’re acquiring the potential and the journey we’re on as a team,” says Haukeland. Post-acquisition, the plan is to keep Spacemaker as an autonomous unit within Autodesk and (hopefully) not interfere too much with the formula and startup ethos that has seemingly been working, while also enabling the team to have the resources needed to continue on their mission. “This is something strategically we’ve been working towards, both with the products we make internally with the capabilities we roll out that are more cutting edge, and also our initiative when we look at companies we’re interested in acquiring,” he said. And that’s what drives us, that’s what we want to do: We want to realize our vision and get our offering out in the world, at the hands of millions of architects and engineers and developers”.ĭuring a call late Friday, Andrew Anagnost, CEO and president of Autodesk, said the acquisition of Spacemaker is in line with the company’s long-term strategy of using the power of the cloud, “cheap compute” and machine learning to evolve and change the way people design things. And we understood that this can put our vision on steroids and we can really reach that vision much faster. “But when we started talking to Autodesk, who have reached out for a while, we realized they share our vision.
“It was never our plan in the beginning of 2020 to sell the company,” Haukeland told me on a call last week.
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Spacemaker then returns design alternatives optimized for the full potential of the site. To do this, the platform enables users to quickly “generate, optimize, and iterate on” design alternatives, taking into account design criteria and data like terrain, maps, wind, lighting, traffic and zoning, etc. By having Spacemaker look over a designer’s shoulder, as CEO Haukeland likes to say, the software aims to augment the work of humans and not only speed up the urban development design and planning process but also improve outcomes, including around sustainability and quality of life for the people who will ultimately live in the resulting spaces. real estate technology fund Round Hill Ventures and Norway’s Construct Venture.įounded by Håvard Haukeland, Carl Christensen and Anders Kvale, and based in Oslo, Norway - but with a number of other outposts around the globe - the 115-person Spacemaker team develops and sells cloud-based software that utilises AI to help architects, urban designers and real estate developers make more informed design decisions. Other investors on the cap table include Nordic real estate innovator NREP, Nordic property developer OBOS, U.K.
Spacemaker’s VC backers include European firms Atomico and Northzone, which co-led the company’s $25 million Series A round in 2019. The price of the acquisition is $240 million in a mostly all-cash deal. publicly listed software and services company that targets engineering and design industries, has acquired Norway’s Spacemaker, a startup that has developed AI-supported software for urban development.