Significant market momentum attracts global strategic investors including Energy Impact Partners, Envision Ventures and E.ON
REDWOOD CITY, Calif— May 24, 2016—AutoGrid Systems, the Energy Internet leader, announced today that it has raised over $20 million in financing from a consortium of global strategic investors. AutoGrid plans to use the funding to further develop its Energy Internet suite of applications and to extend marketing and sales efforts in North America, Asia and Europe.
The consortium is led by the utility-backed fund Energy Impact Partners (EIP), an investment firm representing four of the largest utilities in the United States and United Kingdom, and Envision Ventures, a Silicon Valley-based fund focused on software for big data, the Industrial Internet of Things (IoT) and security. The consortium also includes Envision Energy, one of the largest renewable energy developers and technology providers in the world with over 50 gigawatts of assets under management. All existing AutoGrid investors, including E.ON, one of the largest utilities and renewable energy developers in the world, participated in the heavily oversubscribed round.
“Energy Impact Partners is focused on supporting companies that are optimizing energy consumption and improving sustainable energy generation,” said Michael Donnelly, the EIP Partner who will be joining AutoGrid’s board of directors. “AutoGrid offers unparalleled real-time connectivity and control with its software platform. Big data analytics and automated control of grid operations will allow utilities to adapt to the increasingly complex distributed energy environment. Having these capabilities in a system that is both scalable to millions of endpoints and rapidly deployable is a game changer.”
“We look to invest in and partner with category-leading big data and IoT software companies that transform markets and industries, so AutoGrid is right in our sweet spot,” said Dan Ahn, Managing Partner at Envision Ventures. “We are excited to become an investor in AutoGrid, and support their effort to transform the energy industry, making it both more efficient and sustainable.”
“AutoGrid has a great and proven platform that provides us with data science capability to better understand our customers’ energy production and consumption, and how to integrate both into our system,” said Susana Quintana-Plaza, Senior Vice President Innovation at E.ON.
The investment comes on the heels of a highly successful 2015, in which AutoGrid realized 100 percent year-over-year growth in annual recurring revenues and a 350 percent increase in distributed energy resources (DERs) under contract.
“We are excited to work with our global consortium of strategic investors, who not only bring the needed capital but the benefit of extensive interactions with their business units to inform our product roadmap,” said Dr. Amit Narayan, founder and CEO of AutoGrid. “This investment will help accelerate our mission of creating software that can leverage data to power our future energy needs, eliminating our dependence on unsustainable fossil-fuels.”
AutoGrid’s integrated suite of Energy Internet software applications enables energy service providers operating in increasingly competitive market environments to build next-generation renewable-friendly energy networks by managing and optimizing DERs in real-time while engaging customers, enhancing reliability and reducing operating expenses.
About Energy Impact Partners
Energy Impact Partners is a collaborative strategic investment fund that invests in companies optimizing energy consumption and improving sustainable energy generation. Through close collaboration with its strategic investor base, EIP seeks to bring the best companies, buying power and vision in the industry to bear on the emerging energy landscape. For more information, visit www.energyimpactpartners.com
About Envision Ventures
Envision Ventures was founded by entrepreneurs who launched successful companies dedicated to changing the world. Envision takes a long-term view of financing. As an independent evergreen fund, with no end-of-fund life date, Envision helps entrepreneurs avoid many of the conflicts typical in the venture industry. Envision Ventures founder Dan Ahn has been a Silicon Valley venture capitalist for two decades, serving as managing director of two venture firms, Voyager Capital and Woodside Fund, and having invested in numerous successful entrepreneurs. Earlier, Ahn was the founder of Endpoint Technologies, which was successfully acquired by Applied Materials. Ahn holds a BA and MBA from Harvard University. For more information: www.envisionvc.com
About Envision Energy
Envision Energy (www.envision-energy.com) is one of the world’s largest smart energy management companies and among the eight largest turbine companies in the world with more than 7.5 GW of Envision smart wind turbines in operation. Envision’s Energy OS platform is used to manage more than 50 GW of renewable energy assets, including charging stations and energy consumption devices worldwide. Envision has regional offices across Asia, Europe, North and South America and has established global R&D and engineering centers in Denmark, Germany and the United States.
About E.ON
E.ON is an international privately-owned energy supplier which faces fundamental change: through implementing its new strategy, E.ON will in the future be focusing entirely on renewables, energy networks and customer solutions, which are the building blocks of the new energy world. The conventional generation and energy trading businesses were combined into a distinct company, Uniper, as per 1st January, 2016. E.ON plans to spin off the majority of Uniper to E.ON’s shareholders in the second half of 2016.
In the 2015 financial year, the E.ON staff comprises in excess of more than 56,000 employees based in many countries in Europe as well as in Russia and North America, generating sales of around EUR 116 billion. In addition, there are businesses in Brazil and Turkey that E.ON manages jointly with partners.
About AutoGrid Systems
AutoGrid builds software applications that enable a smarter Energy Internet. The company’s suite of Energy Internet applications allows utilities, electricity retailers, renewable energy project developers and energy service providers to deliver cheap, clean and reliable energy by managing networked distributed energy resources (DERs) in real time and at scale. AutoGrid applications are all built on the AutoGrid Energy Data Platform (EDP), with patented Predictive Controls™ technology that leverages petabytes of smart meter, sensor and third-party data, along with powerful data science and high-performance computing algorithms, to monitor, predict, optimize and control the operations of millions of assets connected across global energy networks.
The world’s leading energy companies, including E.ON, Bonneville Power Administration, Florida Power & Light, Southern California Edison, Eneco, Portland General Electric, CPS Energy, New Hampshire Electric Cooperative, NextEra Energy and CLEAResult, are using AutoGrid’s software to improve their operations, integrate renewables and drive deeper engagement with their customers. AutoGrid has been recognized with several prestigious industry awards including Bloomberg New Energy Pioneer 2016, World Economic Forum Technology Pioneer 2015, Red Herring Top 100 North America 2015, Industrial Innovation Company of the Year by the Cleantech Group and Green Product of the Year by the BIG Awards for Business Programs.
Press Contact
Jason Brown
Eastwick for AutoGrid
+1 646-780-5193
jason@eastwick.com
