Gridware, a Walnut Creek, Calif.-based wildfire prevention technology company, raised $5.3m in seed funding.
The round was co-led by Fifty Years and True Ventures, with participation from Y-Combinator, Liquid 2 Ventures, Wireframe Ventures, SOMA Capital, Anorak Ventures, and other funds and angels.
The company intends to use the funds to accelerate its engineering and R&D efforts and expand its utility partnership network.
Co-founded by Hall Chen, Tim Barat, and Abdulrahman Bin Omar, Gridware provides sensing technology that detects and predicts grid failures to empower utilities to prioritize upgrades and respond to incidents before they can lead to catastrophic wildfires. The company 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.
In a YC power play, Gridware girds $5 3M to save humanity from weather yahoo.com - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from yahoo.com Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
Gridware is building early-detection sensors for power grid failures and wildfires
Like corporate financial accounting, the power grid never draws headlines when things are going well. No journalist writes “The power remains on,” or discusses the extensive work it takes to maintain the grid. Instead, it takes a record-breaking ice wave to knock out power to one of the largest states in America for it to start garnering front-page coverage, or perhaps massive wildfires in America’s most populous state like the Camp Fire in California in 2018.
Power grids are going to be in the news more and more in the coming years as global climate change intensifies storm activity and grids come under increasingly harsh strain. As my colleague Jon Shieber wrote yesterday, “Whether it’s heavily regulated markets like California or a free market like Texas, current policy can’t stop the weather from wreaking havoc and putting people’s lives at risk.” The grid is at the center of one