From Wind Farms to Smart Buildings: The Founders Behind xWatts

xWatts was born from a shared frustration: seeing large, high-value infrastructure projects overlook simple opportunities to dramatically reduce energy waste. Co-founders Yigit Akar and Alex Allen combined their backgrounds in renewable energy, engineering, and complex systems to build a platform that doesn’t just highlight inefficiencies — it fixes them automatically. Today, xWatts is helping universities, healthcare providers, and industrial sites significantly cut both costs and carbon.

Tell us a bit about yourself and what your company does

We’re Yigit Akar and Alex Allen, Co-Founders of xWatts, respectively CEO and Chief Product Officer.

Yigit: My background is in electronics engineering and renewable energy. Before moving to the UK in 2018 for my MBA, I worked across Europe and Turkey with a German energy company, commissioning large-scale wind and solar plants.

That’s where my passion for tackling energy challenges really started. After Cambridge, I met Alex, who comes from a background in computer science and control systems engineering. He had spent years in Big Corporate infrastructure and building energy simulations, and together, we felt there was a real opportunity to build something new. He saw large, multi-million dollar projects that were missing huge opportunities in energy reduction through low-cost, low hanging fruit because they were chasing trophy deals rather than fixing root causes.

That “something” became xWatts, which is an intelligent energy management platform designed to reduce energy costs and emissions in large, complex estates and industrial facilities by 25–40%.

What makes us different from other players in this space is that we don’t just report insights, but actively connect to energy systems, model the facility in real time and automatically optimise assets through the whole energy cycle from generation to demand - like HVAC, Solar, and CHP engines - as a whole system. In short, we don’t just tell you what to do, but do it for you!

Early on, we tested the platform at Wolfson College in Cambridge, where we cut net energy consumption by over 25% across three buildings. Building on that initial success we’ve since rolled it out to healthcare facilities, universities and industrial sites.

What are your goals for the company over the next few years?

Alex: We founded xWatts in 2022, and since launching, we’ve been fortunate to grow quickly. Over the last two years, we’ve tripled revenues annually and secured strong traction across different sectors.

We’ve just closed our Pre-Series A and this capital will be used primarily to support team growth. At the moment, we’re just eight people and the demand for our platform is already outpacing our bandwidth. Over the next 12 months, the goal is to double our

team size, adding depth in both data science and sales, and really scale in our core verticals.

Looking further ahead, our milestone is to reach £2 million in revenue and secure a strong position in one or two core markets by Series A. The current plan is to kick the next funding round off in late 2026, which will enable us to become a leader in energy management within our chosen sectors.

Can you share any advice for aspiring CEOs, or an example of a recent challenge you’ve navigated?

Yigit: The biggest lesson I’ve learned so far is that as CEO, you can’t just get consumed by day-to-day firefighting. There are always dozens of urgent problems, but your real job is to think six to twelve months ahead. That long-term view has been crucial for us, particularly around fundraising.

For example, we didn’t raise this current round because we needed money to survive. We raised it because we could see what was coming, and we knew that in order to compete at scale in a crowded market, we’d need to double down on growth and product investment ahead of time.

The mindset of looking beyond immediate fires and planning for what’s around the corner has really shaped how we try to steer xWatts.

Alex: Yes, there’s always lots that you could fix today, but you can’t fix them all! You need to learn to get comfortable with not everything being perfect and focussing on the elements that are going to drive you through the next hurdle of growth – be cognisant of what you need to get back to, don’t forget it (!), but focus on what’s going to add value today versus be ok for now.

Do you have any useful fundraising advice from your own experience?

Yigit: Perhaps two things. First, labels matter! Whether it’s a pre-seed, seed, or Series A, investors have clear (sometimes unspoken) expectations of what you should have achieved at each stage. For example, for pre-seed, it’s (usually) a working MVP and some validation; for Series A, it’s hitting around £1 million ARR. We’ve always tried to quietly exceed those benchmarks before going out to raise, and it really speeds up both the conversations and the negotiations.

Second, it’s about being transparent with investors. We’ve always shared regular updates with Cambridge Angels and other backers. This isn’t just the good news, but the challenges too. That openness has really helped us build trust and turned investors into genuine partners who lean in to help when things get tough.

How has having Cambridge Angels in your investor group assisted you?

Alex: Cambridge Angels have been incredibly valuable beyond just capital. Different members have supported us in different ways. One has been enormously helpful with introductions with C-Suite NHS and Healthcare providers which helped us secure further projects in the sector. References are invaluable for scaling. Another has been a brilliant sounding board when it comes to fundraising strategy.

As a first-time founder, you realise quickly that you don’t know everything. Having experienced investors ask tough questions, share perspective from their own journeys, and open doors to decision-makers has really accelerated our progress.

Anything else you’d like to share about your journey or the company’s mission?

Yigit: Our mission at xWatts is straightforward, but ambitious: to decarbonise the world’s most complex real estate in a way that’s intelligent, automated and scalable. Every single company we work with is under pressure to both reduce costs and operate more sustainably. We want to be the technology layer that makes both achievable.

From a personal standpoint building a company like this is never predictable. But what keeps Alex and I motivated is that we’re working on something with real-world impact. Every new building we optimise is not just a win for us; it’s a win for the planet. That bigger purpose is what makes the ups and downs of the start-up life so worthwhile.