UK’s Infogrid has acquired ESG tech company Aquicore

A recent acquisition puts the environmental, social and governance (ESG) analysis and reporting capabilities that Aquicore built over the past decade under the umbrella of British SaaS company Infogrid.

The pair announced Wednesday that Infogrid, which is HQed in London, had formally acquired DC-based Aquicore. The 60-person team at Aquicore, which hosts an all-in-one platform for buildings to monitor their utility use, will officially join Infogrid. That includes Aquicore founder Logan Soya, who will become part of Infogrid’s senior leadership team. Financial terms for the deal were not revealed.

Aquicore was founded in 2012, and its AI solutions are currently used in over 1,000 buildings nationwide. The company was on a growth streak before the pandemic, raising $14 million in 2020 after moving to a new office space in Penn Quarter in late 2019 that was triple the previous one’s size. In total, the company has raised $33 million in venture capital.

“I started Aquicore 10 years ago with the mission to connect people to buildings,” Soya told Technical.ly. “We had humble beginnings as an energy management and metering platform. When we realized we could apply our data and insights to the global climate challenge, our vision expanded.”

Infogrid and Aquicore said that the acquisition will strengthen both companies’ work toward net-zero real estate. Infogrid is a real estate intelligence company that partners with other tech businesses to create smart buildings. Despite the acquisition, Soya confirmed that Aquicore will maintain its DC headquarters and exist “as a part of the Infogrid family.”

Infogrid founder and CEO William Cowell de Gruchy described the acquisition as “an important leap forward on the path to a net-zero future for the built environment, an ambition that grows more urgent every day.”

“Together, Infogrid, Aquicore and our external partners will be able to deliver a complete environmental reporting and reduction offering for the commercial real estate sector — and therefore a credible path to a zero carbon future,” he added in a statement.

According to an announcement from both companies, the acquisition follows a large period of growth from Infogrid. The company said it has scaled rapidly as of late and “collected over 18 billion data points.”

As the pair move forward, Soya said he only expects the ESG services industry to grow. He noted that state and local governments are instilling building performance standards with firm energy and carbon targets. Moreover, as public institutions soon need to disclose their emissions information, carbon is becoming a priority in the top offices.

“The ESG market is now shifting from ambition to action. Investors want to see that firms are moving the needle on their ESG commitments each year,” Soya said. “Given these increasing market pressures, we expect to see more and more demand for ESG analytics solutions that help organizations take measurable steps to decarbonize.”