Tech
A startup using AI to help with clean energy procurement just raised $5.75 million from Coatue. Check out the 8-slide pitch deck Verse used to secure the cash.
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- Verse, a startup using AI and optimization for clean energy procurement, just raised $5.75 million.
- The San Francisco-based company’s seed funding comes from growth investor Coatue.
- We got an exclusive look at the 8-slide redacted pitch deck it used to raise the round.
A startup using generative AI to help businesses buy renewable electricity has just secured a $5.75 million seed round from growth investor Coatue.
Verse, founded in 2022, uses AI and optimization to help companies quickly and easily procure clean power at a low cost. The San Francisco-headquartered startup allows customers to set, measure and manage their renewable energy use through its Aria platform.
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Switching to renewable energy is fundamental in decarbonization as energy makes up the bulk of annual carbon emissions; two-thirds of energy still comes from fossil fuels. Many do this by purchasing renewable energy credits, which certifies that they have paid for green energy, but they have faced controversy for double counting.
Alternatively, there are power purchase agreements (PPA). Led by big tech companies such as Amazon, Microsoft, Meta, and Google, PPAs are essentially long-term agreements where companies commit to buying renewable energy at a specific price. PPAs can help de-risk the development of renewable projects because they have a guaranteed supply, in the same way the likes of Stripe’s Frontier has backed Climeworks.
Clean energy procurement lacks dedicated tools and comes with “massive” overheads, which is exactly what Verse wants to change, cofounder and CEO Seyed Madaeni told Insider.
“These overhead costs are related to the nature of the transaction, securing supply, understanding your needs, your goals. A lot of it is being served by Excel spreadsheets, consulting work, and overheads and inefficiency,” Madaeni said. This puts renewables out of reach for smaller companies who don’t have access to expertise and resources, the company claims.
Verse’s end-to-end platform analyses customer objectives and “does a massive amount of economic analysis and calculations” to create portfolios of energy assets. It also takes advantage of generative AI to conduct transactions, slashing time and cost requirements. Once a portfolio of renewable projects has been created, it can be managed and reported on, in terms of cost and emissions savings.
The platform is “primed to redefine how businesses procure and manage clean energy,” Jaimin Rangwalla, senior managing director at Coatue, said in a statement.
The startup has also signed a customer agreement with European direct air capture company Climeworks, whose operations run exclusively on clean energy including geothermal. Capturing CO2 directly from the air is notoriously power-hungry, making access to renewables critical so that such facilities don’t emit more than they extract.
Verse is currently focused on serving the US wholesale markets but does not have a strict geographical focus, the company said.
The seed funding will be used to grow the current team of 16 and launch the platform to an initial group of customers and testers. It will continue to build out new features.
Twine Ventures, MCJ Collective, Firstminute Capital, Collaborative Fund, and Future Positive participated in the round alongside Incite.org, the investment arm of Matt Rogers, the founder of smart thermostat company Nest which was later acquired by Google.
Check out the 8-slide redacted pitch deck below: