Leia de Guzman Cambio is the story of two commercial real estate investors who spent years reconciling invoices and updating spreadsheets for portfolios worth billions of dollars, and then built the software they wished they had. De Guzman, a former director of investments at Oxford Properties Group, and Stephanie Grayson, a former KKR professional, are the co-founders of Cambio, a San Francisco company that sells an AI-native operations platform to institutional real estate owners. On January 22, 2026, the company announced its public launch and an $18 million Series A led by Maverick Ventures. According to Crunchbase News, the round values Cambio at $100 million and brings its total funding to $22 million. Here is how the founders got there, what the platform does, who the customers are and what is still unproven.
Leia de Guzman Cambio: Who Are the Founders?
Cambio was founded by Leia de Guzman and Stephanie Grayson. The company’s About page lists both as co-founders and describes Cambio as an operations platform for real estate, built by real estate professionals and purpose-built for the largest owners and occupiers. A third leader, Leon Chen, is listed as chief technology officer. The company does not use CEO titles for the founders on its page, and press coverage calls them co-founders.
Crunchbase News dates the company’s founding to 2022. The company’s own announcement says the founders built Cambio while completing their master’s degrees at Stanford University. Its homepage describes the business as unifying building data, automating compliance reporting and identifying return-ranked retrofit investments.
What sets the story apart is the founders’ background as investors and operators. The press release says the founding team brings decades of experience from KKR, Oxford Properties Group, JPMorgan and Goldman Sachs, where they encountered the inefficiency of managing real estate portfolios with manual processes. That background is the core of the Leia de Guzman Cambio story.
From Oxford Properties to Stanford
De Guzman’s career is documented on the About page. She spent nearly a decade in commercial real estate and, as Director of Investments across Europe and Asia Pacific for Oxford Properties Group, part of the OMERS pension group, she deployed $8 billion globally. She also worked at G2 Venture Partners as a climate tech investor.
Her interest in sustainable buildings began a decade earlier, according to the page, when she led a net-zero, solar-powered construction project for the U.S. Department of Energy. She holds a bachelor’s degree in environmental science, an MBA from Stanford and the CFA designation, and she leads product vision and execution at Cambio.
The combination is unusual. Many climate-tech founders come from engineering, and many real estate investors have little exposure to building science. De Guzman has both, and she knows what an investment committee asks before approving a retrofit. That dual background is the product foundation of Leia de Guzman Cambio.
Stephanie Grayson: Goldman Sachs, KKR and JPMorgan
Grayson leads commercialization and go-to-market strategy. According to the About page, she spent nearly a decade in commercial real estate, launching platforms at Goldman Sachs, KKR, which she describes as a $30 billion REIT, and JPMorgan. She completed her MBA and a master’s in the sustainable built environment at Stanford and holds a bachelor’s degree in economics from Harvard.
Her master’s thesis, the page says, focused on the commercialization of AI to drive mass retrofit adoption. That thesis is effectively the origin of the company: a study of how AI could make retrofitting buildings at scale commercially viable.
The Crunchbase News exclusive quotes Grayson on why she left a large institution to start a company. Moving from institutions to a startup serving them reflects a broader shift, she said, the choice to step inside the AI transformation and not just observe it from the sidelines. Her investor-first perspective is the commercial lens behind Leia de Guzman Cambio.
The Problem: A $20 Trillion Industry Running on PDFs
The company states the problem in blunt terms. In the Series A announcement, it says commercial real estate is a $20 trillion industry that spends billions of dollars annually on manual data gathering and investment analysis, with multimillion-dollar decisions still guided by spreadsheets, PDFs and months of manual review.
De Guzman said owners have been “buried in thousands of pages of unstructured building data” with no practical way to draw insights. The data includes utility bills, energy audits, invoices, regulatory filings and building assessments, spread across management systems and portals.
The stakes are climate-related as well as financial. The About page notes that real estate drives 40% of global carbon emissions, a company statement of a widely cited estimate, and argues that decarbonizing buildings needs an investment case owners can underwrite. That gap between messy data and investment-grade decisions is the problem Leia de Guzman Cambio set out to solve.
Building Cambio: Ingest, Integrate, Escalate
The Cambio website lays out how the platform works in five parts. Data ingestion “unleashes” building data trapped in thousands of PDFs and spreadsheets. Integration connects to thousands of utility providers, EnergyStar Portfolio Manager and a customer’s corporate data lake via API. Escalation and collaboration automatically collects data from stakeholders, routes approvals and supports shared decision-making.
The other two parts are compliance and reporting, and retrofit identification and execution. The company calls the result “one single source of truth,” with a command center where portfolio goals can be defined and cascaded to every stakeholder.
Technically, the company says it uses large language models and agentic AI workflows to reason over thousands of pages of building data, compressing months of work into minutes. The press release contrasts this with legacy real estate software that relies on static rules and manual inputs. The platform is the technical backbone of Leia de Guzman Cambio.
Compliance and Retrofit: GRESB, TCFD, SFDR and ROI-Ranked Upgrades
The product has two main outputs. The first is compliance and reporting. The homepage says Cambio automates reporting to GRESB, TCFD, SFDR, EnergyStar, regulatory benchmarking and investors. The company announced it is now an official GRESB partner, and a separate announcement describes joining forces with IMT to accelerate building performance standards compliance.
The second output is retrofit planning. The company says it surfaces ROI-ranked retrofit opportunities and coordinates implementation across asset management, property management, building engineering and consultancies. Investors can evaluate and prioritize retrofit opportunities across thousands of buildings at once, according to the press release.
Principal Real Estate described how it uses the platform. Managing Director Jennifer McConkey said Principal uses AI and large language models not only to extract data from utility bills and building assessments but also to drive investment-grade decarbonization at scale, with models assessing building performance, identifying retrofit potential and generating capex strategies. Turning compliance into capital planning is the strategic idea behind Leia de Guzman Cambio.
Security and Institutional Customers
Institutional buyers require security credentials, and Cambio lists them. The homepage says it is SOC 2 Type II compliant, ISO 27001 certified and designed to meet GDPR requirements. These are company statements, and customers typically ask for the audit reports themselves.
The customer list is a major selling point. The Series A announcement names Principal Real Estate, Nuveen Real Estate, BGO, LaSalle Investment Management, Oxford Properties Group, Madison International Realty and Beacon Capital Partners. The website displays a wider row of logos, including JLL, MetLife, Cushman and Wakefield, Clarion Partners and others, without labeling which are customers and which are partners, so confirm any specific name with the company.
The testimonials show a consistent theme: operator credibility. A Nuveen asset management lead said no other tool came close to Cambio’s operator-centricity, and a head of sustainability at a global bank said Cambio swept both parts of an RFP that included 25 vendors. These are selected by the company, but the named customers are notable. The credentials and customers are the trust layer of Leia de Guzman Cambio.
Traction: 2 Billion Square Feet and 12,201 Buildings
The homepage reports four headline numbers: 35 countries, 2.0 billion square feet on Cambio, 12,201 buildings served and a four-fold improvement in data quality after switching to Cambio, as identified by a third-party audit and assurance. All are company-reported.
Press coverage uses different figures for some of them. Bisnow, citing the announcement and Crunchbase, reported operations in 25 countries and information on more than 2 billion square feet of assets, while the company’s release says its stealth-stage customers span more than 35 countries and it has opened a London office to support the EU, UK and APAC.
A customer quoted on the site, an investment manager at a CalSTRS-backed industrial fund, said Cambio caught mistakes in his data in one week that his advisors or existing provider did not find across months. Scale is the headline claim of Leia de Guzman Cambio, and the country count should be checked against the latest company statement.
From Stealth to Public Launch
Cambio’s timeline has two chapters. Bisnow reports, citing Crunchbase, that the company launched its offering at the end of 2023, while Crunchbase News dates the founding to 2022. The company itself describes a “stealth stage” during which it landed customers across more than 35 countries before announcing its public launch on January 22, 2026.
The stealth approach is common for enterprise software selling to large institutions, because customers prefer proven products and early references. It also meant that the first public announcement could name major customers and a funded round at once.
The sources reviewed do not give a precise date for the first customer or product release, so the timeline is approximate. The public launch is the milestone where Leia de Guzman Cambio moved from private pilots to open sales.
The $18M Series A at a $100M Valuation
The funding is documented in a primary source. Cambio’s own announcement and a Business Wire release say the $18 million Series A was led by Maverick Ventures, with participation from Y Combinator, Adverb Ventures and Peterson Ventures, and angel investors including executives from Procore, OpenAI, Anthropic, Vanta, Vercel, ServiceNow, Notion and Amplitude.
Crunchbase News reported exclusively that the round values the company at $100 million and brings total funding to $22 million. Bisnow repeated both figures. The valuation and the total do not appear in the press release itself, so they come from Crunchbase News and its sourcing.
The press release says the capital supports rapid growth, and the company announced a London office and four senior hires at the same time. For more on how funding shapes enterprise AI startups, see our story on Francesco Decamilli’s Uniti, and for more on rounds like this, see our Funding News section. The Series A is the funding milestone of Leia de Guzman Cambio.
The Investors Backing Leia de Guzman
Maverick Ventures, a San Francisco venture firm that grew out of the Maverick Capital investment business and says it has a $10 billion-plus multi-stage platform behind it, led the round. Its managing director Ryan Isono said that Cambio is redefining how the multi-trillion-dollar real estate sector operates, and that the founders have “unrivaled founder-market fit.”
Y Combinator, Adverb Ventures and Peterson Ventures participated, along with angels from technology companies. The list of angel employers, including Procore in construction software, OpenAI and Anthropic in AI, and Vanta, Vercel, ServiceNow, Notion and Amplitude in software, signals technical credibility for a company in a traditional industry.
Isono also told Crunchbase News that his firm was impressed that the founders had spent more than two decades running commercial real estate portfolios. For an enterprise AI company, that mix of institutional venture backing and operator angels strengthens Leia de Guzman Cambio.
The Team and Partnerships
The leadership team combines software and real estate. CTO Leon Chen, according to the About page, has more than 12 years of software engineering experience, spent four years at Faire as its fourth backend engineer and helped grow it to a $12 billion company and lead its international expansion. He holds a bachelor’s degree in computer science from the University of Waterloo.
The Series A announcement added four senior leaders: Lizzie Leon, formerly of Goldman Sachs, as head of product innovation; Katerina Kaimakamis, formerly of Oxford Properties Group and CBRE, as European business lead; Laura Willet, formerly of BGO, as Canadian business lead; and Matthew Lobach, formerly of Hersha Hospitality Trust, as head of partner operations and strategy. The company says their combined experience covers more than $400 billion of commercial real estate. A head of building science, Zach Alderman, P.E., appears in the team photo caption.
On partnerships, the website lists official GRESB partner status and a collaboration with IMT on building performance standards compliance. The team is the operating strength of Leia de Guzman Cambio, and it reflects the company’s stated mix of Silicon Valley technology and real estate professionals.
Where Cambio Stands in Real Estate Technology
Real estate technology is a large category with many segments. Property management systems, ESG reporting tools, energy management platforms, carbon accounting software and building analytics all overlap with parts of Cambio’s offering. Large brokerages and consultancies also sell sustainability advisory services.
Cambio’s differentiators are clear. It focuses on institutional owners and investors, not individual properties. It combines compliance reporting with retrofit capital planning in one system. It is built on agentic AI that reads unstructured documents. And it was founded by people who ran these portfolios.
The risks are real. Enterprise sales to large institutions are slow. Competitors, including established ESG and building-data vendors, can add AI features. Accuracy matters enormously when reports go to regulators and investors. And a $100 million valuation sets high expectations. In a crowded field, Leia de Guzman Cambio competes on investor credibility and AI depth.
Risks and Open Questions
A fair article on an enterprise AI company should name the open questions.
Unverified statistics. The 2 billion square feet, 12,201 buildings and four-fold data quality figures are company-reported, and the third-party audit is not named.
Customer list. The website’s logo wall does not distinguish customers from partners.
Timeline and scale. Sources differ on founding year (2022 versus a 2023 launch) and country count (25 versus 35).
Valuation. The $100 million valuation and $22 million total come from Crunchbase News, not the press release.
Regulation. Compliance requirements across regions change, and software must keep up.
Competition. Large vendors and consultancies are moving into AI-driven real estate analytics.
None of these is unusual for a company at this stage. Naming them is part of an honest look at Leia de Guzman Cambio.
Leadership Style and What’s Next
The founders divide the work by strength. De Guzman leads product vision and execution, Grayson leads commercialization and go-to-market, and Chen leads engineering. Their public statements are consistent: investor-centric, data-driven and focused on turning compliance into capital planning.
The company’s own values, listed on the About page, are to empower effortless decarbonization, to be customer-obsessed with partner strategy teams acting as extensions of client staff and to experiment fearlessly. The announced direction is global expansion, with a London office supporting the EU, UK and APAC, and continued product work on retrofit ranking and data quality.
The test will be turning a prestigious customer list into broad adoption, and keeping accuracy high as the data grows. That discipline will define the next chapter of Leia de Guzman Cambio.
Lessons From the Leia de Guzman Cambio Journey
The Leia de Guzman Cambio journey offers five practical lessons for founders.
First, build for the customer you used to be. The founders were investors who lived the pain, which gave them credibility with buyers.
Second, pick a thesis and test it. A Stanford master’s thesis on AI for mass retrofits became a company.
Third, hire from your customers’ world. Senior leaders from Goldman Sachs, Oxford Properties, BGO and Hersha added trust.
Fourth, earn security credentials early. SOC 2 Type II and ISO 27001 matter to institutions.
Fifth, connect compliance to returns. Framing regulation as a source of investable retrofit opportunities changes the buyer’s mindset.
Frequently Asked Questions
Who is Leia de Guzman?
Leia de Guzman is a co-founder of Cambio. She was previously Director of Investments for Europe and Asia Pacific at Oxford Properties Group and a climate tech investor at G2 Venture Partners.
What is the Leia de Guzman Cambio story?
It is the story of two former commercial real estate investors who built an AI-native operations platform at Stanford to replace spreadsheets and PDFs, and who raised an $18 million Series A led by Maverick Ventures.
What is Cambio?
Cambio is a San Francisco company that sells an AI-native commercial real estate operations platform for compliance reporting, data management and ROI-ranked retrofit planning.
Who founded Cambio?
Leia de Guzman and Stephanie Grayson co-founded Cambio. Leon Chen is chief technology officer.
How much funding has Cambio raised?
Cambio announced an $18 million Series A on January 22, 2026. Crunchbase News reports total funding of $22 million.
What is Cambio’s valuation?
Crunchbase News reports the Series A values Cambio at $100 million. The company’s press release does not state a valuation.
Who invests in Cambio?
The round was led by Maverick Ventures, with Y Combinator, Adverb Ventures, Peterson Ventures and angels from Procore, OpenAI, Anthropic, Vanta, Vercel, ServiceNow, Notion and Amplitude.
Who are Cambio’s customers?
Named customers include Principal Real Estate, Nuveen Real Estate, BGO, LaSalle Investment Management, Oxford Properties Group, Madison International Realty and Beacon Capital Partners.
Is Cambio secure?
The company says it is SOC 2 Type II compliant and ISO 27001 certified, and designed to meet GDPR requirements.
Where is Cambio based?
Cambio is based in San Francisco, with a London office supporting the EU, UK and APAC.
Conclusion
Leia de Guzman Cambio shows how investors who feel a problem daily can build the tool that solves it. By turning a Stanford thesis on AI and mass retrofits into a platform that reads unstructured building data, automates compliance reporting and ranks upgrades by return, de Guzman and Grayson won institutional customers across dozens of countries and an $18 million round at a reported $100 million valuation. The open questions are whether the reported scale holds up, how the platform stays accurate as regulation changes and how well it fends off larger competitors. If it does, Cambio may help move the world’s largest property owners from spreadsheets to decisions.
For more founder journeys in property and hospitality technology, see Randall Hom’s Hostie, Vittorio Gargiulo’s Hotiday and Stephen Haney’s Paper on Denote Press, or browse all Founder Stories.
