• noa (formerly A/O) focuses on technologies disrupting the real estate industry and built world, enabling its decarbonisation and positive transformation.
• First investment in a VC fund by Grosvenor’s UK property business will help accelerate innovation. 

Grosvenor’s UK property business has invested in noa (formerly known as A/O)’s Fund II, which invests in technologies that aim to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, build climate resilience, and accelerate the energy transition and digitisation of the real estate and construction industries. 

Founded in 2019, noa is Europe’s largest venture capital firm focused on the built world, aiming to transform the industry into a more digital, efficient, and accessible asset class. noa’s investment focus spans the sectors’ entire lifecycle, including supply chain, building design, construction, operations, and energy transition. Previous companies backed by noa include Satellite Vu (a thermal data observation firm), Plentific (a property management software platform), 011H (a platform digitising the design and build process) and Passive Logic (which creates next generation fully autonomous building management systems). 

Since 2022, Grosvenor Property UK has been deploying capital into early-stage companies capable of accelerating the attainment of its ambitious commercial, environmental, and social impact goals. The investment alongside noa is the UK property business’s first in a VC fund, having already made direct investments in Commonplace, Pupil, QFlow and Demand Logic. The terms of the investment are not disclosed.

Gregory Dewerpe, Founder and Managing Partner at noa commented: “The built world represents 40% of global carbon emissions yet receives less than 5% of venture funding. Despite this, the last five years have seen the growth of built world tech investments outpace the wider market, and Europe is very much at the centre of the industry’s outperformance. We have built a strong relationship with Grosvenor over the last few years and have always been impressed by their firm wide alignment and dedication to steering innovation and sustainability in the industry. Working closely with Grosvenor will be an important addition to our fund, particularly as they join our invite-only group of strategic real estate LPs, who we work jointly with to help foster innovation and accelerate the transformation of the incumbents to drive change across the built world.” 

Andy Doyle, Director of Operations, Innovation & Strategy at Grosvenor commented: “Fostering innovation is critical to addressing the challenges we face, including our response to climate change and its impact on our portfolio. Our investments to date are helping scale solutions to just some of these challenges whilst driving change within Grosvenor. We’re excited to be working closely with the brilliant team at noa, leveraging their experience to help improve our access to highly relevant technologies best able to address the challenges we face and help us to deliver future growth.”

About Grosvenor 

Grosvenor is an international organisation whose activities span urban property, food and agtech, rural estate management and support for philanthropic initiatives.

We are a values-led business which represents the Grosvenor family and share a common purpose - to deliver lasting commercial, social and environmental benefit - addressing today’s needs while taking responsibility for those of future generations.  

With a track record of over 340 years, we work to improve urban property and places in many of the world’s leading cities, promoting sustainability within the built environment and enhancing the wellbeing of customers and communities. 

Our UK property business supports c1,000 businesses and tens of thousands of residents and workers across London’s West End each day. We also invest in, create and manage sustainable neighbourhoods in Liverpool and across England. As a 1.5^oC aligned company, pioneering change and new ways of thinking about property we aim to ensure our places benefit both people and the planet over the long term.

About noa

noa is Europe’s largest built world venture capital firm and partners with the most talented founders, engineers, executives and thought leaders on revolutionary, category-leading investments to drive disruption in real estate and positively impact the entire build world ecosystem and beyond.

Launched in 2019 as A/O, noa closed its first evergreen vehicle with €250m, backed by some of the largest and most forward-thinking real estate owners, operators and family offices in Europe who share noa’s vision and commitment to improving quality of life, accelerating sustainable living, and enabling decarbonisation of the largest asset class in the world.

noa has developed rare strategic access to a diverse portfolio of $40 billion in real estate assets, and in 2020 became the first VC to join the World Economic Forum (WEF) as a member of its Global Innovators Community. These partnerships provide a unique platform to intensify the team’s efforts in addressing major global challenges around urbanisation and climate risk, supporting the path to net zero.

noa was founded and is led by one of Europe’s leading and highly successful built world venture capitalists, Gregory Dewerpe. The team’s specialist investment, strategic and operational skillsets, combined with in-house real estate, data science and technology expertise, make noa one of the most differentiated sector-focused teams in the industry.