BrainBox AI Expands Product Offering to Multi-Site Retail Portfolios

BrainBox AI, which installed its first HVAC monitoring software system in New York last year and has raised $38.6 million in investment according to Crunchbase, has expanded its product offerings. Instead of looking at single buildings alone, the new service is aimed at multi-site retail portfolios.

“With in-store retail nearly back to pre-pandemic levels, retailers are looking for solutions to reduce energy costs and emissions, while still optimizing customer and employee comfort,” a company press release said.

Quoting a figure from the World Business Council for Sustainable Development that 25% of greenhouse gas emissions are due to retail supply chains — an enormous segment of industry given that broad definition — BrainBox AI claims that its new offering allows retailers to reduce their energy consumption and carbon footprint across a multi-location portfolio.

According to CEO Sam Ramadori, quoted in the release, the company wants to “empower brick-and-mortar retailers and warehouses to reduce their carbon emissions and play a critical role in adopting energy efficient climate solutions to address the GHGs they are emitting.”

The nuts and bolts would involve connecting the BrainBox AI software to either an existing building management system or AI-enabled thermostat upgrades that could connect those devices wirelessly to the company’s cloud.

“Sleep Country, Canada’s leading specialty sleep retailer, installed BrainBox AI across 214 stores, representing 1.1 million square feet of retail space across Canada,” the company says. “BrainBox AI has also been deployed in hundreds of other multi-site real estate locations including grocers, discount retailers, big box stores, medical clinics, sporting goods stores.

The company claims that its systems have “decreased its multi-site retail clients’ HVAC electricity spend by an average 26% and gas spend by an average 34%, enabling an overall average 28% reduction in the HVAC emissions of their buildings.”

BrainBox AI further claims that retailers can achieve up to 15% maintenance cost reductions, up to 50% extension of equipment service life, and a 60% improvement in comfort level for people in the stores.

According to the company, the software focuses on scopes 1 and 2 greenhouse gas emissions. Scope 1 refers to the properties, assets, and resources a company directly owns or controls, such as retail locations. Scope 2 involves emissions that a company indirectly produces by using energy, because creation of that energy generates additional emissions, although not in ways that the company in question directly controls.