Two Deutsche Bank bankers quit to fix Europe’s 90 million streetlights: ENVIOTECH raises €1M+ pre-seed

When Adrian Rhaese’s best friend was rushed to hospital after a cycling accident caused by streetlights switched off to save electricity costs, one thought wouldn’t leave him: how can one of the world’s strongest economies still rely on public infrastructure that fails this badly? Why is safety the first thing to go when budgets tighten?

That question became ENVIOTECH. The Frankfurt-based startup has raised over €1 million in pre-seed funding to make Europe’s existing streetlights intelligent — without replacing a single pole.

The round was led by Jürgen Fitschen, former Co-CEO of Deutsche Bank, with participation from Joachim Drees (former CEO of MAN), Alexander Eyhorn (founder of Bidirex), and Danilo Jovicic-Albrecht (co-founder of Vialytics). When the former Co-CEO of Deutsche Bank leads a pre-seed round for a streetlight startup, it says something about both the founders and the size of the problem.

90 million streetlights, most of them decades old

Europe has approximately 90 million streetlights. The vast majority run on outdated technology — they switch on at dusk, switch off at dawn, and consume the same amount of energy regardless of whether anyone is on the street. When municipalities face budget pressure, the response is often blunt: turn them off entirely, or dim them to levels that compromise public safety.

Replacing these lights with modern smart systems is technically possible but economically prohibitive at scale. A full replacement requires civil engineering work, new poles, new wiring, and significant capital expenditure — costs that most municipal budgets simply cannot absorb. The result: Europe’s street lighting infrastructure remains largely unintelligent, and the people who depend on it — pedestrians, cyclists, shift workers — pay the price.

The solution: 15-minute retrofit, no civil engineering

ENVIOTECH’s approach is deliberately non-disruptive. Its plug-and-play retrofit system can be installed on any existing streetlight in under 15 minutes, with no pole replacement and no civil engineering work required. The system uses Zhaga-compatible IoT nodes — an international standard for smart lighting connectors — meaning it works across manufacturers and existing infrastructure.

Once installed, the retrofit enables municipalities to dim and brighten lights based on real-time conditions — motion detection, time of day, weather, ambient light — reducing energy consumption by up to 80% while maintaining or improving safety levels. All lights are managed centrally through ENVIOTECH’s Open-Port Dashboard, which supports not just lighting but wider smart city applications through a growing network of 20+ integration partners.

The philosophy — upgrade what exists rather than replace it — echoes what we’ve seen work in other European infrastructure startups. Mobility Signage took the same approach with public transport IT: connect fragmented systems rather than rip them out. In both cases, the insight is the same — the biggest barrier to modernisation is not technology, it’s implementation cost.

Two bankers who walked out of Deutsche Bank

The founding story is worth dwelling on. Both Adrian and Linh chose to leave comfortable, high-status banking careers to fix streetlights. That sentence sounds absurd — until you understand the scale of the problem and the investor conviction behind it.

EWOR CEO Daniel Dippold, whose fellowship programme accepted ENVIOTECH, put it simply: “When Adrian told me he had left Deutsche Bank to improve street lighting, I immediately knew what kind of founder I was dealing with. The best founders we invest in don’t chase trends. They pursue problems that no one else wants to solve.”

The regulatory tailwind

ENVIOTECH’s timing is not accidental. The EU’s Energy Performance of Buildings Directive (EU 2024/1275) now mandates automatic lighting controls for non-residential buildings and public infrastructure. Municipalities across Europe face increasing regulatory pressure to modernise their lighting systems — but most lack the budget for full replacements. A retrofit solution that can be deployed at a fraction of the cost, with no disruption to existing infrastructure, fits the regulatory moment precisely.

The competitive landscape is also clearing. Tvilight, one of the leading European smart street lighting companies, was 75% acquired by Italian electrical giant GEWISS in December 2024. Telensa was absorbed into Signify (formerly Philips Lighting). Both moves consolidate the sector into large incumbents — leaving space for an agile, retrofit-focused startup to compete on speed, cost, and ease of deployment.

What the funding enables

The €1M+ pre-seed will fund three priorities: expanding pilot projects with German municipalities and infrastructure partners, developing the technology and product portfolio further, and preparing the foundation for the next growth phase. The company is already a Frankfurt Forward Startup of the Year finalist and is actively hiring embedded systems engineers in Frankfurt.

ENVIOTECH’s ambition extends beyond streetlights. The Open-Port Dashboard is designed as a platform for broader smart city applications — from environmental sensors to traffic monitoring — using existing street lighting poles as the physical backbone. The streetlight is just the entry point.

For a startup founded by two people who left banking to solve a problem most people don’t even know exists, that kind of quiet ambition feels exactly right.