The real estate and infrastructure company GARBE and the startup Factory Futury have honored the first scholarship holders of the joint funding program "Futury Thought Leaders Fellowships powered by GARBE" at the GARBE Thought Leader Conference 2026. The founding team reperks with Timon Ivens and Robin Lais as well as Christoph Ehler were selected. Ehler is a doctoral student at the Technical University of Darmstadt and at the Real Estate Institute of the Frankfurt School of Finance & Management. reperks is developing an AI agent to automate utility bills. Ehler is working on a machine learning model for automated property valuation and price forecasting. Both projects convinced the jury with their great potential for the real estate industry.
The winners will receive funding totalling 10,000 euros as well as twelve-month executive mentoring by experts from GARBE. In addition, they will be integrated into Futury's innovation ecosystem.
"The two award-winning projects offer convincing solutions for different challenges facing the real estate industry. reperks is developing a new technological approach to utility billing, while Christoph Ehler is working to support data-based decisions in real estate project development. Our goal is to accompany the further development and prepare for widespread use in practice," says Thomas Kallenbrunnen, Managing Director of GARBE Capital & Strategy and GARBE Infrastructure.
Melissa Ott, Managing Director at Futury, adds: "The name of the Thought Leader Fellowship sums up the program's ambition: We want to promote outstanding talents who advance the real estate and construction industry with their ideas. With reperks and Christoph Ehler, we promote talents with great entrepreneurial potential and, together with GARBE, support them in translating their ideas into scalable solutions for the real estate industry."
AI for more efficient utility bills
The reperks team is developing an AI agent that largely automates the entire process of utility billing, from invoice receipt to objection management. While today several departments are often involved in the process one after the other, the AI agent takes over standard cases independently and only presents complex processes to employees for review. The first large property managers are already testing the solution in pilot operation.
"Our AI agent enables real estate companies and managers to create utility bills within a few minutes in a largely automated manner. At the moment, we are concentrating primarily on the residential area," says Robin Lais, co-founder of reperks. Timon Ivens, co-founder of reperks, adds: "The next logical step for us is to use our software in the commercial sector. With GARBE, we have an ideal partner to gain initial experience in the field of logistics and local supply properties and to further develop the solution together."
More objective property valuations through machine learning
Christoph Ehler is developing a machine learning model for automated real estate valuation and price forecasts. On the basis of big data, real estate is to be valued more objectively and the factors that determine its value are to be better identified. In this way, the model is intended to support real estate development, transaction management and portfolio management.
"In the real estate industry, many decisions are still strongly influenced by experience and gut feeling. My goal is to anchor data-driven tools more firmly in the real estate industry. The fellowship gives me the opportunity to transfer the scientific approach behind my model into practice. That was always my goal," says Ehler.
