AI platform Urbint funding rises to $109 million

AI platform Urbint has announced a $60 million Series C investment round, enabling it to scale its technology to meet rising demand for the company's incident prevention software. 

The round, which raises its total investment to $109 million, was led by Energize Ventures, with participation from American Electric Power, OGCI Climate Investments, and existing investors Energy Impact Partners, National Grid Partners, Blue Bear Capital, and Salesforce Ventures.

Critical infrastructure companies use Urbint to stop failures, damages, and worker injuries before they happen. 

With Congress expected to pass a $1 trillion infrastructure bill – the largest in a century – the coming years will bring unprecedented work to overhaul America's infrastructure and increase its resilience to extreme weather and other threats.

"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," said Corey Capasso, Founder and CEO of Urbint. "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."

"Today's critical infrastructure owners and operators are facing new challenges as aging assets and climate change threats create a more complex operating environment," said Tyler Lancaster, Principal at Energize Ventures. "Electric utilities in the US alone spend more than $15 billion annually on operations and maintenance. Urbint's next-generation risk management software helps customers identify and prioritise safety and reliability threats, in turn lowering O&M costs, reducing emissions, and improving worker safety - all while ensuring critical infrastructure stays online."

"By protecting critical infrastructure, Urbint's technology prevented methane emissions equivalent to over 60,000 metric tons of carbon dioxide in 2020 alone," said Pratima Rangarajan, OGCI Climate Investments CEO. "We look forward to accelerating Urbint's climate impact by supporting their growth into new markets around the world."

Urbint pinpoints risks before catastrophe strikes, and its software powers preventative action across core programs such as construction, maintenance, and field operations. Urbint's customers include National Grid, Southern Company, and many other top energy and infrastructure companies.

The AI Dossier lists six value attributes

A new Deloitte AI Institute report, The AI Dossier, examines the most compelling business use cases for AI across six major industries, including energy.

The report looks across all the industry-specific use cases to identify six major ways AI can create value for business:

• Cost reduction Applying AI and intelligent automation solutions to automate tasks that are relatively low value and often repetitive, reducing costs through improved efficiency and quality
• Speed to execution Reducing the time required to achieve operational and business results by minimising latency
• Reduced complexity Improving understanding and decision making through analytics that are more proactive, predictive and able to see patterns in increasingly complex sources
• Transformed engagement Changing the way people interact with technology, enabling businesses to engage with people on human terms rather than forcing humans to engage on machine terms
• Fueled innovation Redefining 'where to play' and 'how to win' by using AI to enable innovative new products, markets and business models
• Fortified trust Securing a business from risks such as fraud and cyber, and improving quality and consistency while enabling greater transparency to enhance brand trust

"Artificial intelligence has made the leap to practical reality and is quickly becoming a competitive necessity. Yet, amidst the current frenzy of AI advancement and adoption, many leaders are questioning what AI can actually do for their businesses," said Nitin Mittal, U.S. AI co-leader and principal, Deloitte Consulting LLP. "The AI Dossier can help these leaders understand the value AI can deliver and how to prioritize their investment in AI, today and in the future."

Deloitte's State of AI in the Enterprise, 3rd Edition study found that 74% of businesses are still in the AI experimentation stage with a focus on modernising their data for AI and building AI expertise through an assortment of siloed pilot programs and proofs-of-concept, but without a clear vision of how all the pieces fit together. By contrast, only 26% of businesses are focused on deploying high impact AI use cases at scale, which is where AI can create real value.