AutoGrid has secured Series D funding from a set of strategic energy investors. New investors in this round include CLP Holdings Group, innogy, Ørstead, Tenaska and others.
All existing investors; Energy Impact Partners, Envision Ventures, Total Energy Ventures, Clearsky Power & Technology Fund, E.ON and Foundation Capital also participated in this round.
AutoGrid’s round of $32 million represents the largest infusion to date in any pure-play software platform focused on applying AI to real-time optimization and controls of flexible energy resources. With this round, the company has raised a total of $75 million to accelerate growth and further increase its product differentiation.
The round is led by a global consortium of energy companies, allowing AutoGrid to accelerate commercial deployment of the AutoGrid Flex platform across North America, Europe and Asia-Pacific.
This consortium includes seven of the 10 largest utilities in North America, serves over 100 million customers globally and represents $1 trillion in total market capitalization. AutoGrid Flex, is a comprehensive, predictive, fast and customer centric platform that mines the Energy Internet’s rich data lode to extract the highest value from all distributed energy resources.
AutoGrid is also hiring aggressively in energy, AI, big data and Internet of Things (IoT) areas to develop capacity to manage increasingly larger-scale and complex grid modernization and digital transformation projects across the globe.
AutoGrid is experiencing rapid growth and is on track to contract over 5,000 MW of flexible resources on its platform before the end of 2018, representing a compound annual growth rate of over 100 percent for each of the last three years.
“We are humbled by the trust and responsibility that some of the largest energy companies in the world are placing in us in their transformative journey towards a new energy future,” said Amit Narayan, AutoGrid chief executive officer. “We are excited by this investment, which will help us to drive forward our mission of accelerating the world’s transition to clean, affordable and reliable energy.”
“Electricity is the energy of the 21st century. It’s our belief that the transition to a new, clean energy world will be enabled through digital technologies such as artificial intelligence, big data and IoT,” said Girish Nadkarni, president of Total Energy Ventures. “AutoGrid has clearly established itself as the industry leader in this space and our partnership with them will help shape the future of new energy.”
“At CLP we believe that energy flow is no longer a one-way transaction. By partnering with AutoGrid, we are learning to turn flexible energy resources into balanced real-time energy services. We’re increasing productivity and value of our energy assets and unlocking the possibility of exciting new digital energy services for our customers,” said Austin R Bryan, senior director of innovation & ventures at CLP. “AutoGrid’s platform enables a deeper understanding of the grid, delivering increased support to customers and ultimately giving them more choice and control. CLP is pleased to be a strategic investor and partner with AutoGrid.”
“AutoGrid leads worldwide in applying AI and big data technologies to the energy value-chain,” said Florian Kolb, managing director at innogy New Ventures. “Their unique platform meets our current and future innovation requirements to develop our regulated and deregulated businesses further.”
These new partnerships come with commercial projects that will shape the future of the energy industry, redefine Asian and European markets, and demonstrate the importance of flexibility management as a core competency for successful energy companies.
AutoGrid has evaluated the needs of DSM in India and is currently working with the Andhra Pradesh Government and APSPDCL to build and launch these path-breaking programs which will create the basis for transformational changes in the electricity sector.