Making Climate Software Tangible: ZEDEDA and new Mobility

Energize and Lux Capital co-led the Series A investment in ZEDEDA back in 2018. ZEDEDA is a technology infrastructure company that helps deliver cloud-level applications to the edge of the network. Why did we make the investment? The desktop worker is fortunate to have a computer with continuous WiFi and a computer powerful enough to handle local apps and internet to access the cloud.

Edge devices are usually independent and isolated machines that have low, local compute, poor IT infrastructure, and low connectivity to central HQ. As an infrastructure IT company, most of our impact-focused Limited Partners wanted more detail on how this tool helps enable a more sustainable future.

4+ years into the investment and many of those examples have emerged and I want to highlight two of them:

1- The gearbox in a wind turbine is very valuable asset. It sounds rudimentary, but the noise (clanks, bangs, friction) the gearbox makes is the simplest way to know the health of the asset. So how does a utility or energy operator listen to a gearbox from a thousand miles away? Simple: you put a small microphone inside the wind turbine’s gearbox area, and control it through a ZEDEDA node controller. This way, the O&M team at central HQ can turn on/off the microphone remotely…. and when “on” the ZEDEDA node controller can also run an “analytics app” on it locally that matches sound patters with fault issues… all digitally and automatically. The node then send back basic intel (limited by remote bandwidth!) and keeps preventative maintenance on track. The energy transition is increasingly decentralized and remote, and the ability to engage with and analyze these assets without having to deploy expensive engineers helps lower costs and increase safety. ZEDEDA helps deliver this edge architecture, and BIG energy companies use this software around the world for similar use cases.

2- The modern car is a computer. The pace of change from analog to digital is being accelerated with the electrification of mobility as OEMs are re-thinking their entire architecture. A major OEM is deploying ZEDEDA edge architecture across every dealership to help automate “over the air” software updates for vehicles in a more simple, and less invasive way. This is meant to deliver a better experience for EV drivers, further enabling the energy transition.

In summary, ZEDEDA is invisible to most people in the energy transition, but their technology is a key part of the new digital backbone for sustainability-focused corporates.