Urbint to invest $60 million in AI platform to help protect critical infrastructure
The addition of a $60 million Series C investment from a collection of partnering companies will allow Urbint to perfect its artificial intelligence platform and scale its prediction and protection capabilities to meet rising demand from infrastructure sources throughout the United States.
Announced this week, the funds bring Urbint’s total funding to $109 million. These funds are being sunk into a platform meant to help critical infrastructure companies to halt failures, damages and worker injuries before they can happen, be they from climate risk, aging infrastructure or increased construction activity.
“America’s infrastructure is at an inflection point. As we’ve seen time and again, mounting threats from climate change to an aging grid have made the risk of major safety incidents unmanageable,” Corey Capasso, founder and CEO of Urbint, said. “Our technology equips the nation’s energy and infrastructure companies with AI to prevent everything from fires, outages, and explosions to tragic worker accidents. This new investment will fuel our expansion to meet this unprecedented moment.”
According to OGCI Climate Investments, a participant in this latest investment round, Urbint’s technology already helped prevent methane emissions equivalent to 60,000 metric tons of CO2 from escaping as a result of infrastructure failures in 2020 alone. It does this by helping companies such as National Grid, Southern Company and more to identify risks before danger strikes and spur preventative construction, maintenance and field operations.
“Today’s critical infrastructure owners and operators are facing new challenges as aging assets and climate change threats create a more complex operating environment,” Tyler Lancaster, principal at Energize Ventures, which led the Series C investment round, said. “Electric utilities in the U.S. alone spend more than $15 billion annually on operations and maintenance. Urbint’s next-generation risk management software helps customers identify and prioritize safety and reliability threats, in turn lowering O&M costs, reducing emissions, and improving worker safety — all while ensuring critical infrastructure stays online.”
In addition to Energize Ventures and OGCI, investors in the AI platform include American Electric Power, Energy Impact Partners, National Grid Partners, Blue Bear Capital, and Salesforce Ventures. Urbint viewed such investments as particularly important in the face of potential infrastructure investments from the U.S. government, which could scale the need for its predictive technology as infrastructure itself grows and changes.
