About 12 months ago the Energize team met Corey Capasso, the cofounder & CEO, of Urbint. He was raising a small, interim financing. We liked the company and we liked the management team’s practical approach to climate change mitigation. Urbint helps critical infrastructure providers asses and mitigate risk in their in-field project development. If you are long the energy transition you are long construction and replacing old, aging assets. Urbint helps critical infrastructure providers execute this building and replacement strategy more safely.

At the time we decided not to invest but gave Corey a list of 5 items that we thought he could improve for us to lean into a future round. The Energize team stayed in touch with Corey and one day a few months back he called us up (no emails with Corey!) and listed off the company’s step by step progress against our earlier benchmarks. The structure of the deal was complete in a few days and Energize and our LPs represent ~$40M of this $60M round. Why?

Check out the blog post here, the press release here, and the Venture Beat article here.

Why We’re Investing in Urbint

Energize Ventures leads $60M Series C

Energize VenturesJust now·4 min read

Energize is excited to announce we are leading the oversubscribed $60M Series C investment in Urbint, a leading operational risk management software platform. American Electric Power and OGCI Climate Investments also joined the round alongside existing investors Energy Impact Partners, National Grid Partners, Blue Bear Capital, and Salesforce Ventures. Energize principal Tyler Lancaster joins the Urbint board, and associate Eileen Waris joins as a board observer.

Aging critical infrastructure and climate change pose an existential risk

Our nation’s critical infrastructure is at an inflection point. Companies across the utility, oil and gas and telecommunications industries rely on vast networks of physical infrastructure that have been built out over time. Today, these assets are aging past their intended useful life, causing a host of new challenges for owners and operators. As critical infrastructure ages, assets fail at increasingly high rates and operations and maintenance costs balloon. All the while, asset productivity wanes. These effects are compounded by more frequent fire and flooding damage due to climate change.

As the U.S. makes commitments to improve and electrify infrastructure at scale, utility, telecom, and other critical infrastructure operators will need to make significant improvements to their maintenance practices. Urbint helps customers in these industries prevent incidents and reduce O&M costs by making risk-based decisions across core operational programs.

Predicting and stopping costly threats with AI

Urbint is the next-generation operational risk management software platform serving critical infrastructure industries. Urbint’s platform leverages real-world data and artificial intelligence to deliver a clear picture of risk in advance. Their software helps critical infrastructure operators and managers assess O&M-related risk based on probability and magnitude, enabling them to take action in the right place, at the right time, before an incident occurs.

Urbint’s suite of solutions offers energy and infrastructure customers products that enhance performance in three areas that matter most: cost savings, worker safety, and prevention and resiliency related to climate change.

Cost savings

In the U.S. alone, damages to underground assets cost midstream gas and utility companies $30 billion annually. Urbint’s risk management software helps utility customers reduce annual damage costs by 40 percent.

Worker safety

Only 45 percent of job-related safety risks are detectable by workers themselves. Hazards related to visible factors such as suspended loads, uneven work surfaces, or moving equipment are often easily identifiable to the naked eye. However, risks caused by unseen factors like temperature, pressure, or mechanical failure pose a bigger threat. Urbint uses AI to identify safety hazards and reduce the risk of serious worker injuries.

Climate change prevention and resiliency

In addition to Urbint’s cost-savings and safety-enhancing benefits, we are also excited about their ESG impact. The oil and gas industry is the second largest source of methane emissions. One of the leading sources of these emissions are leaks caused by aging natural gas infrastructure. To date, Urbint has prevented methane emissions equivalent to more than 80,000 metric tons of carbon dioxide from leaking into the atmosphere, by preventing third-party excavation damages to underground assets and identifying leaky or corroded pipes.

Sales-forward team with industry expertise

Energize first met the Urbint team more than a year ago. Since then, they’ve proven their ability to expand existing customer relationships and add logos with impressive capital efficiency. They’ve also cemented their position as a leading solution provider of risk management software for critical infrastructure industries like electric, gas, and telecom.

Urbint has assembled a world-class team of entrepreneurs, engineers, and energy sector veterans. CEO Corey Capasso has successfully scaled and sold multiple technology companies. Urbint’s leadership team has decades of combined experience helping utility companies design and implement asset management strategies and scaling high-growth data-driven software companies. As they’ve grown, Urbint has continued to add their roster of experts in software, AI, critical infrastructure and energy.

What’s next for Urbint and Energize?

This new round of funding will fuel Urbint’s growth as it continues building a category-defining risk management software platform. With the Series C capital infusion, Urbint is well positioned to further build out a robust sales and marketing team. They will continue to grow market share in the utilities space, expand into new critical infrastructure sectors where risk management is a top priority, and invest in adding to their suite of world-class risk management tools.

We are excited to partner with this team and help them scale to meet growing global challenges posed by aging infrastructure and climate risk.