Exclusive: Ramboll injects multi-million pound investment into city planning platform VU.CITY
Smart city planning platform VU.CITY has secured series A investment from consulting engineering group Ramboll.
VU.CITY offers interactive 3D models to help architects, developers and planners in city design.
An investment worth £5m will aid the firm in becoming a cross-market platform for data and solution providers, CityA.M. understands
Ramboll joins existing shareholder Grosvenor Hill Ventures, the technology investment ar of real estate advisory firm Savills, and GIA Surveyors.
VU.CITY CEO Jamie Holmes said: “We’ve always believed VU.CITY has almost limitless potential in helping create better cities for the future and the investment from Ramboll marks the beginning of the next stage of our growth.”
The firm currently has the entire of London modelled to 15 cm accuracy, and 90 per cent of boroughs using the platform.
Holmes added: “The ability for us to access Ramboll’s knowledge as designers, engineers, architects and consultants working in cities all over the world will be of huge benefit to our customers.”
Holmes praised Ramboll’s “strong innovation portfolio” and said its generative design real estate platform SiteSolve would be brought into the VU.CITY marketplace as one of the early contributors.
Ramboll ‘s chief operating officer Mathew Riley will join the VU.CITY board.
Riley said: “We see city-wide digital twin technologies as a crucial tool to support the development of sustainable and liveable cities. VU.CITY brings incredible transparency to inform crucial decision making. Strong collaboration and co-creation across our industry is critical to developing and scaling innovative solutions to complex challenges.
“We are excited to partner with the VU.CITY team to accelerate the development of this powerful platform and to bring our domain knowledge and digital expertise to support that journey.”