Session Overview
Back for its third year, this high-demand panel on AI and autonomous buildings explores how autonomy is being redefined in practice. AI is moving beyond HVAC optimization to agent-based intelligence, digital twins, and portfolio-scale platforms that reshape operations across thousands of facilities. Panelists will share insights on breakthroughs, challenges, and the human side of adoption, from building new skills to supporting workforce growth, ensuring people remain central in the age of autonomy.
SPEAKERS
Tracy Markie, CEO/Founder, Engenuity Systems, Inc
Tracy Markie is the Founder & CEO of Engenuity Systems. The company operates two complementary businesses: a VAR and UL 508A/CSA panel shop supplying controls, sensors, meters, and custom panels with engineering support; and eViewIoT, a platform built for SMB facilities that centralizes HVAC, refrigeration, and lighting with portfolio-level visibility and measurable savings. With 30+ years in automation and IoT, Tracy focuses on turning data into decisions that reduce cost, improve uptime, and advance sustainability. He serves as Chairman of the Board of LonMark International and on the Board of the Coalition for Smarter Buildings (C4SB), now part of the Linux Foundation, and champions open, interoperable, open-source–based solutions.
Troy Harvey, CEO/Founder, PassiveLogic
Troy Harvey is the CEO, co-founder, and Chief Product Architect of PassiveLogic, creator of the world’s first platform for powering autonomous infrastructural robots. As a technical CEO, Troy has been the vision behind the PassiveLogic platform since its inception, guiding the design direction of each hardware and software tool within the ecosystem. The optimization of buildings, cities, and other controlled systems is the clearest actionable opportunity Troy sees to solve the world’s most pressing climate challenges.
Troy has secured 56 patents and is credited as a co-inventor on an additional eight. He is a globally recognized thought leader on the future of AI and its applications for the built world and decarbonization. He has presented to the Swift and core Machine Learning teams at Apple and has spoken at the AEE World, FII Priority Summit, NVIDIA GTC, VERGE 22, AI DevWorld, the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence’s Fall Symposium, Tech Connect Europe, ASHRAE, and AHR Expo. He, and PassiveLogic, have been featured in publications such as Axios, Commercial Observer, Crunchbase, Forbes, and Wall Street Journal.
PassiveLogic has raised $84M from investors, including: nVentures (NVIDIA’s venture arm), Era Ventures, Keyframe Capital, Addition, RET Ventures, noa ventures (formerly A/O Proptech), and Brookfield Growth.
Etrit Demaj, Cofounder, KODE Labs
Etrit Demaj is the cofounder of KODE Labs, an international cloud-based vendor-agnostic and open operating system for smart buildings. After working in the real estate industry for over 15 years, Etrit gained deep knowledge and realized the built world was a goldmine of under-leveraged data. He founded KODE, with his brother, Edi Demaj, to bring forth a suite of software products that help the real estate industry embrace the benefits of cloud computing, data engineering, machine learning and other developments in technology faster than ever before. KODE’s approach has always been very human centric.
Keith Gipson, Founder & Ceo, Facil. Ai
One of the top building automation technicians at Honeywell in the late 80’s and engineers at Johnson Controls in the mid 90’s, Keith Gipson has been a pioneer in the Buildings IoT, Enterprise Energy Management (EEM) industries and technology for over twenty-five years. In 1997 Keith Co-Founded the first EEM company, Silicon Energy Corp., which was sold to Itron in 2001 for $71 M. In 2005 Keith co-founded Shield Ops Inc. He architected an AI driven CSI and evidence linking program to help law enforcement discover, classify and correlate crime data as featured on the television show CSI Las Vegas (Season 10, Episode 4 “Coup De Grace”). Most recently Keith was CTO of Phoenix Energy Technologies where he architected the Enterprise DX (“Data eXchange”) EEM platform that monitors and controls over 16,000 retail and commercial buildings, one of the largest integrated, web-based EEM platforms ever created. In March of 2020 founded Facil AI to build one of the first AI Advanced Supervisory Controls solutions. Keith holds a United States patent (US 6,178,362 Enterprise Energy Management System and Method 2001) and was honored by Southern California Edison as “A Modern Day African-American Inventor” for his contributions to the electric utility industry. He resides in Los Angeles, CA with his wife Andrea.
Brian Turner, CEO, OTI
I’m the CEO of OTI, a next-generation MSI focused on transforming the built environment through integrated technologies. With over 30 years in building automation and leadership at Controlco and BuildingsIOT, I’ve worked with major property owners to advance system integration, building data strategies, and demand response. OTI brings together OT systems—like HVAC, lighting, and power metering—with IT tools such as asset management platforms, Outlook, and cloud-based AI to create unified, intelligent building solutions. Our goal is to make buildings smarter, more efficient, and easier to manage, while driving improvements in well-being, energy use, security, and sustainability.
Anno Scholten, Senior Director, Smart FM, CBRE Inc.
Anno Scholten has spent the last 30 years driving innovation in commercial building systems, smart buildings and smart energy technologies. Anno was Co-Founder and CEO of E2C Technology, a leading developer of applications and solutions that connect Smart Buildings with Smart Analytics and Energy solutions. CBRE acquired E2C Technology along with their innovative Nexus platform in 2022. Anno and his team now lead the development of CBRE’s next generation SmartFM solutions. Anno has been a major contributor and leader in several critical standards that have transformed building automation systems including BACnet, LON, oBIX and Haystack. He also holds US Patents on a Distributed-Architecture Building Controller, an Automated Load Control and Dispatch System and a System for Improved Energy Utilization of a Large Building or Facility.
