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OpenSensors secures $4M for air-

monitoring platform which allows offices to
be more Covid-safe
Mike Butcher@mikebutcher / 8:56 AM EST•December 16, 2020
 Comment
Image Credits: OpenSensors

Today, the acute asthma attack of primary school-aged girl in February

2013 was ruled by a UK court to be due to air pollution. It is thought to
be the first ruling of its kind in the world. Only a year after Ella Kissi-
Debrah died, another mother also became concerned about the effects
of air quality on her daughter’s asthma and decided to do something
about it.
Today, Yodit Stanton has secured $4m in seed funding for her air
monitoring startup OpenSensors, in a Seed round led by Crane
Venture Partners and other unnamed investors. The startup previously
bootstrapped the company prior to the round, supported by customer
revenues.
OpenSensors, uses sensors to monitor air quality and light intensity,
but it’s the data platform that is the real ‘special sauce’. The startup’s
technology works to reveal workplace and workforce conditions and
patterns. It competes with companies like Condecco and Workplace
Fabric, but takes a more ‘360 degree’ approach.
It now has more than 30 customers with complex real estate operations
across North America, Ireland, UK and Europe, in industries such as
Insurance, Finance, Tech and more.

OpenSensors

Building costs are the 2nd highest expense for organizations, with
office costs over £20bn per year in the UK, but even in normal, pre-
pandemic times, half of that office space is unused at any point during
the day and only reaches 55% peak utilization. Buildings also represent
36% of global energy usage & 39% of CO2 emissions. OpenSensors
tracks humidity, CO2 levels, and more to guide on the optimal capacity
to reduce viral transmission, thus enabling companies to return their
workforces to offices safely.
Stanton commented: “How we work and live are changing faster than
we could have ever anticipated. There is a real opportunity for
humanity to rethink how we use the physical world with sustainability in
mind as well as making the design of workplaces better for people
using them.”
Scott Sage, Partner at Crane Venture Partners  said: “With data
insights, real-world usage and known customer references,
OpenSensors has all the ingredients to become a trusted advisor and
solutions provider throughout COVID-19 and the immediate recovery,
as well as supporting the shift towards more flexible working that
COVID-19 has accelerated.”
Speaking exclusively to TechCrunch, Stanton, who also founded and
runs the UK’s Women In Data event, said: “Initially it just started as a
fun hobby project. I was playing around with IoT as in my daughter has
asthma, so I was monitoring air quality up in our neighborhood to try to
see if I can correlate the particulates spikes and so forth with her
asthma attacks. I released it as a project for my community to monitor
air quality. But it became, I guess a real thing when people asked if I
could manage their buildings.”
She said that low humidity encourages virus transmission: “So you
really have to aim for around 40% humidity within an indoor
environment and dry air also affects your immune system as an
individual.”
This means that monitoring air quality has become a huge issue for
companies. So it unsurprising that VCs are now backing air-quality
startups like OpenSensors.
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