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Breakthrough Energy Ventures commits to Vantem prefabricated housing
Bill Gates backed venture aims to address the affordability gap between net-zero energy homes and prefabricated housing. A startup called Vantem is positioned to achieve this.
The company, which just raised a Series A round of investment from the Bill Gates-founded firm Breakthrough Energy Ventures, builds homes using panels with a proprietary design that sandwiches an insulating layer between two structural boards. In effect, it makes prefabricated units out of highly efficient ceramic-like tiles.
“You don’t need to reinforce it with steel, wood, or anything else; it can be loaded for your walls, for your floor, for your roof,” says Vantem CEO Chris Anderson. “That’s what we do: We make the entire box of these prefabricated modular units out of these panels.”
According to company sources, the strength and resiliency of Vantem’s system is well-suited for a wide range of regions and climates, including extreme hot and cold, wet tropical, dry desert, high hurricane and seismic zones.
The company launched first in South America and the Caribbean. After years of testing, code approvals, and building proofs of concept, it has spent the last three years constructing around 297,000 sqm of prefabricated housing. In each location, it partners with local developers to build a new factory.
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The buildings are around 50% faster to build than standard construction, Anderson says, and around 20% less expensive. Compared to typical net-zero construction, they may be 30% less expensive. That makes affordable net-zero housing possible. In one project, the company plans to build 3,000 units of affordable housing in Uruguay over the next three or four years.
The company further plans to build 15 factories in the U.S. over the next seven years, each capable of producing 93,000 sqm of homes each year.
See: vantem.com
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