building-automation
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How GDI Turned a Broom Into a C$2.5 Billion Building Machine - and What Operators Can Copy
GDI spent a century moving from janitorial work into the machinery, data and energy systems behind a building. Its playbook is unflashy, acquisition-heavy and surprisingly useful: own more of the work, make one person accountable and know when to sell the pieces that no longer fit.
The Two Engineers Who Turned Locked Doors Into a Software Problem
Justin Dagen and Jason Higley spent 15 years wiring up access control for Fortune 100 campuses. Then they built the off-the-shelf product they wished existed - and sold it to the company chasing the same doors.
Leviton Turned a Light Socket Into a 120-Year Hardware Empire - Here’s the Expansion Playbook
The family-owned manufacturer began with a part for gas lamps. Its real trick was learning when to abandon the product category - without abandoning the customer, the channel, or the wall.
The $12 Relay That Wants to Run Your Whole House
Shelly's tiny relays slip behind the switches you already own and quietly automate the house - no hub, no subscription, and a following of DIY installers who treat local control like a religion.
Switch Automation Learned the Hard Part of Smart Buildings Is the Part Nobody Sees
The Denver proptech company connects old controls, new sensors and portfolio software in one operational layer. Its useful lesson is wonderfully unglamorous: before a building can become intelligent, someone has to make its data trustworthy.
Zan Compute Put Sensors in the Restroom. Now It Wants AI to Run the Cleaning Shift.
The Santa Clara company spent a decade teaching buildings to notice an empty soap dispenser. Its next bet is harder: turning those signals into schedules, work orders and decisions that cleaning teams will actually use.
Fifth Wall Built a Venture Fund With a Customer List Attached
The Los Angeles firm turned real estate's slow technology adoption into a distribution strategy: owners supply capital and operating problems, while startups bring the software, hardware and climate tools.
The Company Behind the Gauge on the Wall
Dwyer Instruments has been making the little pressure gauges bolted to industrial walls since 1931. In 2022 it swallowed OMEGA Engineering - a company twice its public profile - and became a measurement conglomerate hiding in plain sight.
The 140-Year-Old Thermostat Company Cooling the AI Boom
Johnson Controls began with a classroom that was too hot. Today, its chillers, controls and service crews sit at the intersection of two expensive problems: buildings use too much energy, and AI infrastructure produces too much heat.
Trane Technologies
The company behind Trane and Thermo King is turning a century of cooling know-how into an energy-management business for buildings, refrigerated fleets and AI data centers. Its wager is simple: the cheapest new energy is often the energy a machine stops wasting.
Honeywell Technologies
After spinning off aerospace and advanced materials, Honeywell is smaller, sharper and focused on one difficult job: teaching the physical world to run with less waste, fewer surprises and more autonomy.
INTEREL
INTEREL is a Dubai-based smart building technology company that builds the hardware, operating system and IoT infrastructure hotels and multifamily properties use to control HVAC, lighting, shades and guest services from a single connected platform. Its 'Hotel of Things' ecosystem pairs a portfolio of smart thermostats and room controllers with INTEREL OS and the connectBsmart connectivity framework, letting properties automate energy use, integrate door locks, voice assistants and property-management systems, and cut water and power consumption. Founded in 2010, INTEREL has installed roughly 500,000 devices across more than 45 countries and now operates within the Siemens Xcelerator ecosystem.
Verustruct
Verustruct is a New Haven-based construction-technology company building a gantry-less 3D printing system to make affordable, sustainable housing at scale. Founded by former SpaceX engineer Nick Callegari, its patent-pending translational slipform printer extrudes load-bearing walls with embedded mechanical, electrical, and plumbing systems, then scales itself up layer by layer, sidestepping the bulky gantry frames that cap the size of most additive-construction projects. Organized as a public benefit corporation, Verustruct aims to cut home construction cost by roughly half and emissions by around 40 percent.
Runwise
Runwise is a New York-based smart-building company that retrofits aging heating, cooling, water, and electrical systems with proprietary wireless hardware, sensors, and cloud software. Its platform learns each building's behavior and automatically runs core systems at the minimum needed, cutting fuel use 20-25%, lowering carbon emissions, and helping owners comply with climate laws like NYC's Local Law 97. Used in over 10,000 buildings across the U.S., Runwise has saved customers more than $100 million in energy costs and positions itself as the operating system for buildings still running on 1960s technology.