GridBeyond Boosts Global Energy Management Reach with $13.7M Investment by Samsung Ventures
AI-enabled energy management provider GridBeyond has gained even deeper financial support with a new investor in Samsung Ventures.
The $13.78 million (12M Euro) equity round brings Samsung Ventures alongside existing GridBeyond shareholders such as ABB, Constellation Technology Ventures, Energy Impact Partners, Alantra’s Energy Transition Fund, Klima and Act Venture Capital. Longtime GridBeyond investors include Yokogawa, EDP and Enterprise Ireland.
The energy management technology deployed by London-based GridBeyond can optimize distributed energy resources (DERs) for grid services, energy trading and market engagement with various interconnections globally. The Samsung Ventures funding will aid GridBeyond in expanding its work across the United Kingdom, Ireland, the United States, Japan and Australia.
Samsung Ventures’ investment is also strengthening its announced support for decarbonizing the grid through aggregation of DERs such as wind, solar, battery storage and other renewables, as well as utilizing greater digitization to achieve sustainability goals.
“GridBeyond has demonstrated exceptional technical expertise and global traction in a rapidly evolving energy landscape”, said a spokesperson for Samsung Ventures. “Their ability to deliver real-time demand response, optimize renewable and battery assets, and enable intelligent energy trading across markets such as the United States, Australia, and Japan positions them as a key enabler of smarter energy systems and greater grid resilience. “
GridBeyond’s tools utilize artificial intelligence (AI)-enabled forecasting and predictive market analytics to pool DERs for participation in activities such as energy arbitrage, frequency response, capacity market participation and distribution network support. This array of services can include virtual power plant technologies aggregating distributed energy assets for grid-wide needs such as peak demand.
Deploying those services creates a deeper value proposition for developers and customers of DERs including microgrids.
“This partnership will deliver world-leading products for renewable and battery developers, enabling greater asset value, improved grid stability, and faster progress toward a decarbonized energy system," Grid Beyond CEO Michael Phelan said.
Phelan and colleagues founded GridBeyond under another name in 2007. The company began commercial energy trading several years later and has been active recently on the acquisition front.
GridBeyond acquired the Veritone Inc. energy business in 2023. Gore Street Capital’s Energy Storage Fund also hired GridBeyond to provide scheduling, trading and optimization services for the investor’s 200-MW Big Rock battery storage project in California one year ago.
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About the Author
Rod Walton, EnergyTech Managing Editor
Managing Editor
For EnergyTech editorial inquiries, please contact Managing Editor Rod Walton at [email protected].
Rod Walton has spent 17 years covering the energy industry as a newspaper and trade journalist. He formerly was energy writer and business editor at the Tulsa World. Later, he spent six years covering the electricity power sector for Pennwell and Clarion Events. He joined Endeavor and EnergyTech in November 2021.
Walton earned his Bachelors degree in journalism from the University of Oklahoma. His career stops include the Moore American, Bartlesville Examiner-Enterprise, Wagoner Tribune and Tulsa World.
EnergyTech is focused on the mission critical and large-scale energy users and their sustainability and resiliency goals. These include the commercial and industrial sectors, as well as the military, universities, data centers and microgrids. The C&I sectors together account for close to 30 percent of greenhouse gas emissions in the U.S.
He was named Managing Editor for Microgrid Knowledge and EnergyTech starting July 1, 2023
Many large-scale energy users such as Fortune 500 companies, and mission-critical users such as military bases, universities, healthcare facilities, public safety and data centers, shifting their energy priorities to reach net-zero carbon goals within the coming decades. These include plans for renewable energy power purchase agreements, but also on-site resiliency projects such as microgrids, combined heat and power, rooftop solar, energy storage, digitalization and building efficiency upgrades.