AiDash – an enterprise SaaS company making critical infrastructure industries climate-resilient and more sustainable with satellites and AI – announced that it received $50 million in funding, bringing the total raised to date to $83 million. And the Series C funding round was oversubscribed, indicative of growing investor interest in proven, scalable, and effective climate technologies.
Lightrock led AiDash’s funding round, with Partner Ashish (Ash) Puri joining the company’s board of directors. And SE Ventures (a global venture fund backed by Schneider Electric) also participated in the round, along with all of AiDash’s previous investors, including G2 Venture Partners, Benhamou Global Ventures, National Grid Partners, Edison International, Shell Ventures, and additional strategic investors. The funds will fuel growth as AiDash anticipates nearly doubling its team of 300 over the next two years. This company will also establish a European headquarters and expand internationally to meet growing demand.
The funding round comes amid a surge in demand for AiDash’s suite of satellite-first products, including its Intelligent Vegetation Management System (IVMS), which enables utilities to identify vegetation risks before they damage the grid and optimize maintenance cycles, and its Intelligent Sustainability Management System (ISMS) – an essential tool for organizations seeking to comply with the UK’s mandatory Biodiversity Net Gain laws introduced under the Environment Act 2021. AiDash is gaining growth momentum in Europe, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand along with growing interest in the U.S. and the UK. The company has over 150 customers worldwide and has been doubling its annual recurring revenue (ARR) every year since its inception in 2019.
Climate change has created unprecedented risks for enterprises operating in critical infrastructure sectors. For example, climate change hazards often interfere with power systems through direct effects such as storms, flooding, and wildfires. And the average U.S. customer has lost power an average of over seven hours per year since 2020, with the vast majority of outages caused by extreme weather. These outages result in untold damage every year, including 2.5 TWh of electricity loss, over $150 billion in economic loss, and millions of people’s lives affected.
AiDash’s products are redefining grid reliability and resource efficiency. And its technology can reduce the number of vegetation-caused power outages during storms by 15%, boost grid reliability by 5-15%, and deliver Operations & Maintenance (O&M) cost efficiencies to clients of 10-20%, creating value for customers and delivering climate impact. Plus, the company’s impact extends beyond cost-savings and includes safeguarding the environment and human lives by reducing the likelihood of wildfires caused by vegetation interfering with the safe operation of assets.
AiDash provides five different end-to-end applications with workflows designed for different use cases that immediately create business value. And these include: Intelligent Vegetation Management System (IVMS) for electric utilities and others to manage vegetation risk along rights-of-way and improve grid resiliency; Intelligent Sustainability Management System (ISMS) for land and construction, water and wastewater, government agencies, and others to meet their Biodiversity Net Gain (BNG) and carbon goals; CRIS, the Climate Risk Intelligence System for electric utilities and other industries to increase their climate resiliency by accurately forecasting outages caused by storms and wildfires, assessing damages quickly, restoring services safely, and communicating effectively; IEMS, the Integrity and Encroachment Management System for gas utilities to improve reliability and safety by mitigating pipeline integrity risks like vegetation overgrowth, illegal construction, forest clearings, erosion and land use changes; and Remote Inspection and Monitoring System (RIMS) helps industries inspect and monitor their critical infrastructure, such as roads and railroads.
Each application is powered with AiDash’s satellite-first platform that uses imagery from the world’s largest and best satellite data providers, combined with other data and its own AI. And its AI system has been trained on diverse vegetation and climate conditions from 48 of the 50 U.S. states. Plus, it is capable of using detailed satellite imagery to assess the current condition of infrastructure assets and how they are likely to degrade in the future, providing a significant advantage to customers who can now address issues before they become problems.
KEY QUOTES:
“Our aging infrastructure is breaking under the strain of environmental change, putting lives at risk. Better tools and technologies are required to manage this growing risk and its potential future impact. Our combination of satellite technology and AI is capable of managing this risk and safeguarding at-risk systems, like those managed by utility companies which often span huge geographical areas. With this funding, we look forward to expanding our reach and bringing the benefits of AiDash to more markets.”
– Abhishek Singh, Co-founder and CEO of AiDash
“AiDash’s full-stack software suite delivers significant ROI for customers and positive impact for companies, communities, people, and the climate. As the effects of the climate emergency grow more severe, so will the need for software solutions like AiDash that can safeguard the huge number of geographically distributed assets, enabling customers to provide reliable service to their clients, and meet their regulatory obligations while also reducing risk from extreme weather, wildfires, and habitat destruction.”
– Ash Puri, Partner at Lightrock
“It’s hard to deliver condition-based vegetation management if you can’t consider the full condition of your system all at once. AiDash IVMS not only gives us that view, but also allows us to put scenarios together to envision where our vegetation management choices are taking us: We are now approaching it with a more informed perspective. IVMS shows us the potential reliability impact across our utility. And that’s important to us, because reliability drives a positive customer experience, which is one of our top priorities.”
– Kristen Bridges, Vegetation Management and Contract Services Manager at Alabama Power Company
“The quality and accuracy of the AiDash habitat mapping is the best I have seen to date from remote sensing, and for the first time it is comparable with traditional ground survey mapping for Phase 1 surveys. This is a paradigm shift for the future of mapping and monitoring habitats.”
– David Smith, Natural Water Resources Team Manager, at South West Water
