Watch The Smart Deal 2025

[00:00] Welcome to The Smart Deal 2025, where six innovative smart city startups pitch to a jury of VCs and industry experts for the chance to get up to €50,000 in non-dilutive funding and maybe some future business deals.

[01:31] Telraam - Kris Vanherle, Co-Founder & CEO
Telraam provides citizen-science traffic sensors and an AI-powered platform that collect multimodal traffic data from residential streets. The affordable sensor can be installed by residents on their windows, eliminating the cost of technicians. The company has 3,000 active sensors primarily in Belgium and works with local authorities to generate traffic data through community engagement. Their open data platform enables third-party access and API integration for cities to make data-driven traffic management decisions.

[20:24] Kestrix - Lucy Lyons, Co-Founder & CEO
Kestrix uses thermal imaging drones and AI to map heat loss from buildings at scale, generating energy efficiency retrofit plans to accelerate decarbonization. Their solution reduces energy surveying time from 2-3 hours to less than one minute by applying AI for multimodal vision physics. Currently serving 18 customers across UK social housing providers, local authorities and utilities, they've mapped approximately 9,000 homes and aim to cover entire towns and cities by 2027-28.

[40:03] Latitudo 40 - Gaetano Volpe, Co-Founder & CEO
Latitudo 40 provides an AI copilot for climate sustainability using satellite data and geospatial insights. Their platform identifies climate risks including urban heat islands, flooding, land surface temperature, and pollution at hyperlocal levels. The solution is 98% cheaper than traditional methods and 306 times faster, delivering eight years of data in just one day. They generated €1.7 million in revenue last year and serve cities, systems integrators, and government clients including Abu Dhabi.

[56:57] Irmos Technologies - Samuel Ward, Chief of Staff
Irmos Technologies, an ETH Zurich spin-off, provides sensor-based monitoring and algorithms to extend the safe operational life of bridges and critical infrastructure. Their intelligent platform combines custom sensors with advanced AI to detect and predict structural risks, enabling predictive maintenance. Since incorporation in 2023, they've signed contracts worth over €3.5 million with clients across Switzerland, Germany, Greece, and Spain, and closed a €2 million funding round from two leading Swiss VCs.

[74:16] NEXQT - Fouzi Benkhelifa, Co-Founder & CEO
NEXQT offers a sensor-less AI platform that helps cities access decarbonization insights at building and street level without additional hardware. The platform orchestrates open data, satellite imagery, GPS, and existing counting devices to deliver transition intelligence. Operating at city, district, and road levels with five years of historical data from day one, NEXQT is deployed in 30 cities including Paris and Luxembourg, generating €400K in annual recurring revenue with only one salesperson.

[93:29] Mobility Signage - Stefan Rademacher, Founder & CTO
Mobility Signage provides a modular AI-native operating system for mass transportation, replacing fragmented and outdated IT systems. Their software-as-a-service solution uses open standardized interfaces to connect all data producers and consumers in public transport networks. With customers including BVG Berlin and Stuttgart transit, they follow a land-and-expand strategy that has proven successful, with six out of eight customers requesting upsells within two years.

[111:58] Winner Announcement & Deal Reveals
After deliberation, the jury announced the winners: Kestrix received €10,000, Telraam received €15,000, and Irmos Technologies won the grand prize of €25,000. Additional business deals were announced: BNP Paribas and Plug and Play expressed investment interest in Kestrix, Via Verde showed interest in partnering with Irmos Technologies, and Kurrant Ventures announced investment interest in Latitudo 40. The competition showcased the future of smart city technology and urban innovation at Smart City Expo World Congress Barcelona.