Rhizome, a leading climate resilience planning platform for the power grid, announced the closing of a $6.5 million oversubscribed seed funding round led by Base10 Partners. Base10 is joined in the Seed round by first-time Rhizome investors in MCJ and CLAI. And they join Convective Capital, El Cap, Streetlife Ventures, Stepchange, and Everywhere in closing out the oversubscribed round, all of whom also participated in prior Rhizome fundraises.
What Rhizome does: Launched in 2023, Rhizome supports utilities by helping them model the impacts of increasingly severe extreme weather events against their systems. By utilizing AI against climate risk data and digital representations of the physical grid, Rhizome’s platform identifies vulnerabilities and prioritizes resilience investments and upgrades. This funding will further advance Rhizome’s mission to integrate climate intelligence into utility planning workflows at a time when grid resilience has never been more crucial.
Extreme weather events are rapidly increasing in frequency, intensity, and cost. And for electric utilities, the stakes are particularly high. Major storms have cost individual utilities significant amounts, underscoring the urgent need for more innovative and more resilient infrastructure planning in the face of growing climate volatility. In an environment where every dollar counts, utilities require advanced planning tools that can simulate a range of climate scenarios, thereby removing the guesswork from resilience planning and enabling every dollar to go further.
In just under two years, Rhizome developed and commercialized a suite of mission-specific products used by electric utilities in diverse geographical regions. Its flagship product, gridADAPT, supports long-term infrastructure planning by helping utilities prioritize investments that improve reliability and resilience. And this was followed by the launch of gridFIRM, a first-of-its-kind platform for wildfire risk mitigation, and most recently, gridCAVA (an affordable climate vulnerability assessment tool designed specifically for municipal and cooperative utilities).
Created on Rhizome’s scalable, cloud-based Aspen platform, these tools complement a portfolio of climate resilience planning tools designed to model current and future climate risks against utility infrastructure, available to utilities across Rhizome’s expanding geographical footprint.
Rhizome is actively engaged in utility partnerships across the United States and Canada, supporting organizations that face a range of region-specific climate risks. And the current customers include Avangrid, Seattle City Light, Vermont Electric Power Company (VELCO), and Vermont Electric Cooperative (VEC). Rhizome also has a range of strategic collaborations, including EPRI’s Climate READi, KPMG, Black & Veatch, and the University of Connecticut.
How the funding will be used: The company will utilize the funding to scale its AI platform and team as it continues to help utilities protect their grid and customers from the impacts of extreme weather events. Rhizome will focus on building out its existing platform, new product research and development, and expanding its geographic footprint domestically and internationally.
Rhizome is expanding its platform, growing its team, and partnering with more utilities to strengthen resilience in the face of climate-driven threats.
KEY QUOTES:
“We set out to partner with investors who deeply understand the power sector and share our commitment to solving pressing climate resilience challenges. This funding allows us to scale our work and continue refining a suite of products that help utilities prepare the grid for an increasingly uncertain future.”
Mishal Thadani, Co-founder and CEO of Rhizome
“Resilience is unquestionably one of the most important factors in ensuring a safe, reliable power grid. Mish, Rahul, and the team bring the right mix of vision, urgency, and technical depth to solve this challenge, and we’re proud to support them.”
Rexhi Dollaku, General Partner at Base10 Partners
