Urbint raises $20M for development of AI-powered prediction, threat prevention technology

Published on June 19, 2020 by Chris Galford

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Thanks to investments from Energy Impact Partners, Piva, Salesforce Ventures, and National Grid Partners, Urbint has raised $20 million to further technology capable of predicting and preventing threats to energy infrastructure and worker safety.

“A few years ago, we saw that utilities were facing an overwhelming number of threats in the field, stemming from aging infrastructure, extreme weather, and workforce turnover, and didn’t have adequate tools to make informed risk-driven safety decisions,” Corey Capasso, founder and CEO of Urbint, said. “We built Urbint to arm them with predictive AI to stay one step ahead. The pandemic has only intensified this need as dangers to infrastructure and essential workers increase, and resources are strained. This investment will grow our reach to keep even more communities safe.”

The money will help Urbint scale its field risk management platform and push its capabilities into new industries and new regions. Along the way, the company says it will bring quantifiable improvements to safety and reduce emissions in the process.

“Urbint’s technology is a necessity—it enables the world’s essential utilities to focus scarce resources on the highest-priority risks, with real-world implications from worker safety to explosion prevention, greenhouse gas mitigation, and more,” Bennett Cohen, partner at Piva, said. “Urbint’s combination of first-class enterprise AI, deep industry expertise, and a strong leadership team has already led to impressive traction, with a growth opportunity to become the dominant solution for infrastructure risk in the utility market.”

The technology has already proven its usefulness during the COVID-19 pandemic, as utilities and infrastructure operators turn to its artificial intelligence to address emergency work and identify outage-causing threats while keeping workers from unnecessary exposure to the virus during low priority fieldwork.

“Not only are we an investor in Urbint, but National Grid also uses Urbint’s technology to predict and prevent safety incidents, keeping the community safe,” Lisa Lambert, founder and president of National Grid Partners, said. “AI safety technology is especially vital to reduce risk during this pandemic, and we’re proud to grow our investment in Urbint.”