Google X spin-out Flux is harnessing data to make designing buildings better

The first startup to spin out of Google’s moonshot lab, Google X, and raise funding from VCs is focused on a noble aim: helping make constructing buildings more sustainable using software and data. On Tuesday, a startup called Flux is launching out of stealth — after being spun out of the X lab two years ago — with an early version of a data-driven design software product for building owners, developers and architects.

 

“It’s insane how antiquated the current building process is,” Flux co-founder Michelle Kaufmann, a leading architect who’s built a career on designing pre-fab and sustainable buildings, told me in an interview. Kaufmann and her three co-founders — all software engineers — have developed software that takes data about the requirements of new buildings, combines it with various data points and creates algorithms that enable building developers and architects to collaborate, input new data and streamline the construction in an efficient way. The software can also help the developers and designers make sustainable site-specific decisions.