Delfos, an AI energy software start-up, has raised €6.3 million ($6.9 million) in a seed round to expand across Europe.
The Barcelona-based start-up has developed a real-time virtual engineer for the renewable energy sector that uses AI and big data to automate performance, workflow and ensure reliability.
The seed round was led by climate tech VC Contrarian Ventures and Headline with participation from DOMO.VC and EDP Ventures.
According to Delfos, it has more than 10GW of renewable energy being monitored with its software. It said it can improve operational efficiency and cut costs of component replacement by 30% while improving energy generation by 3-5%.
The company said that its SaaS product for energy businesses identifies issues in networks ahead of any loss of power generation and can identify a component fault before it causes major downtime. This is particularly important for remote assets like solar, where underproduction can lead to significant losses on an investment.
“If we are to enable a green energy transition fully, the renewables at the heart of our future energy supply chain must be as efficient and reliable as possible,” Guilherme Studart, chief executive of Delfos Energy, said.
“Our technology is designed to drive up the energy produced by each renewable asset, making them more lucrative to run, more efficient, and more appealing to investors looking to back the energy transition to net zero.”
The start-up is now based in Barcelona after moving its headquarters from Brazil to focus on the European market.
The seed round will be used to push this expansion in Europe and to hire in Barcelona as well as elsewhere in Europe. It will be targeting utility companies, maintenance providers and renewable energy asset owners with its product.
“Infrastructure investors in renewables want efficiency, stability and to be able to make timely decisions well in advance of failures to ensure their sites are up-and-running 24/7 with no downtime,” Rokas Peciulaitis, managing partner at lead investor Contrarian Ventures, said of the investment.
“Delfos’ predictive management platform is a critical software infrastructure layer to ensure resilience of those assets.”
