AutoGrid raises $32 M in Series-D round led by a clutch of strategic energy investors

Bengaluru-based energy startup AutoGrid on Tuesday raised Series D funding of $32 million. The startup does artificial intelligence (AI)-driven optimisation and controls for the energy industry. 

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 capitalisation. CLP Holdings Group, innogy, Ørstead, Tenaska and others were some of the new investors.

All existing investors -- Energy Impact Partners, Envision Ventures, Total Energy Ventures, Clearsky Power and Technology Fund, E.ON and Foundation Capital -- also participated in this round. 

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. 

The platform is focused on applying AI to real-time optimisation 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 team is also looking to hire in the fields of AI, big data, IoT, and energy to help develop capacity to manage an increasingly larger-scale and complex grid modernisation and digital transformation projects across the globe. 

AutoGrid currently 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. 

Amit Narayan, AutoGrid CEO, in a statement, said, “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.”

He added that 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.

“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.”

Austin R Bryan, Senior Director of Innovation and Ventures at CLP, said that they believe that energy flow is no longer a one-way transaction. By partnering with AutoGrid, they 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. 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,” said Austin.

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 programs that will create the basis for transformational changes in the electricity sector. 

“AutoGrid leads worldwide in applying AI and big data technologies to the energy value chain. Their unique platform meets our current and future innovation requirements to develop our regulated and deregulated businesses further,” said Florian Kolb, Managing Director at Innogy New Ventures.