- Wildfire crisis solution company Gridware announced it raised $5.3 million. These are the details.
Gridware — a wildfire crisis solution company founded by Hall Chen, Tim Barat, Abdulrahman Bin Omar — announced it has raised $5.3 million in a seed round of funding co-led by Fifty Years and True Ventures with participation from Y-Combinator, Liquid 2 Ventures, Wireframe Ventures, SOMA Capital, Anorak Ventures, and a fleet of outstanding funds and angels.
Climate change has massively increased the likelihood and intensity of wildfires along with record-breaking reported wildfires across many U.S. states. And each of the past 4 years has brought another devastating fire season that burned homes, took lives, and left hundreds of thousands of people without power.
This funding round will support Gridware’s efforts towards deploying cutting-edge technology to solve one of the world’s most burning challenges. The company will use these funds to accelerate its engineering and R&D efforts and expand its utility partnership network.
Gridware believes that strong collaboration between all stakeholders to support technologies that make the grid more robust and reliable are essential for minimizing the impact of fire seasons. And to help solve this huge problem, Gridware is building a system that provides millimeter visibility into the internal integrity of each and every grid component transporting electricity through high fire threat areas.
By having the ability to observe the health of grid equipment individually or collectively, decision makers will be able to perform upgrades efficiently, equitably, and effectively towards a future where suburban wildfires a thing of the past.
KEY QUOTES:
“We’re investing in an increasing number of climate technologies that not only help to set the path for an environmentally conscious future but also help to reduce risk for humanity in the immediate term. Gridware’s technology is focused on a problem we have a responsibility to solve. It has the potential to be hugely impactful in reducing rampant wildfires, and the company aligns keenly with our experience of investing in SaaS-enabled hardware.”
— Priscilla Tyler of True Ventures
“It’s clear to us that Gridware has the perfect solution for the wildfire crisis. They understand the need to not only reduce fire risk, but also solve the fundamental problem with how we maintain and inspect our aging power infrastructure. This is a team that has not only deep technical experience, but also practical, personal understanding of what it’s like to be out there maintaining utility poles. They can work with all parties and help solve this problem.”
— Shuo Yang of Fifty Years
