VIA Raises $10M in Milestone Series A Investment Round
New Capital Investments Underscore the Platform Company’s Powerful Promise to Accelerate Clean Energy Adoption
SOMERVILLE, Mass., May 11, 2021 — VIA, a global trailblazer in AI and privacy-preserving software for the energy industry, announced today that it closed a $10 million Series A investment, more than doubling its valuation. VIA chose the Westly Group as its lead investor. This round will fuel the company’s next phase of growth, including hiring best-in-industry talent, expanding its customer base (particularly in the U.S. and Western Europe), and continuing to fast-track delivery of its groundbreaking software platform, in support of its clean energy mission.
The Westly Group was joined by a top five Silicon Valley-based enterprise software company, as well as Prefix Capital, a leading deep technology-focused venture capital firm.
“We founded VIA because of the urgent need for AI in the energy space. The grid simply cannot adopt 100% clean technologies without AI. Data access and privacy were always major hurdles – until VIA,” said Colin Gounden, CEO of VIA. “We’re exceptionally pleased to see our traction and results recognized. This investment will help us meet the exponentially growing customer demand for our platform in the power sector.”
VIA partners with governments, regulators, and power providers to deliver billions of dollars in energy every year to more than 100 million customers worldwide. Its current roster of customers includes energy sector leaders such as ConEd, Enel, and Hawaiian Electric. In addition, VIA has an ongoing evaluation with EPRI, a consortium of more than 400 utilities. With two issued patents and more than 12 pending, VIA’s first-of-its-kind, privacy-preserving AI platform, Trusted Analytics Chain™ (TAC™), also meets the highest DevSecOps standards, as evidenced by its fifth selection by the U.S. Department of Defense earlier this year. TAC™ makes AI available everywhere to enable reliable and consistent clean energy on the grid.
“The Series A market today is more competitive than any time in the last 10 years. Companies really need to show significant momentum before closing their Series A,” explained Danny Cotter, partner at the Westly Group. “VIA has proven incredible commercial uptake with its innovative technologies in a traditionally conservative space by partnering with some of the largest power providers in the world.”
“Great founders build great companies that change the world and VIA has followed this path from inception,” added Byron Alsberg, founding partner at Prefix Capital. “This investment is further validation of the strength of VIA’s vision, team, and technology.”
VIA anticipates key hires over the next several months as well as major customer and partner announcements. Follow the latest from VIA by visiting www.solvewithvia.com/latest/ or on social @solvewithvia.
About VIA
VIA is powering the clean energy revolution. Working with the world’s leading utilities, clean energy companies, and government agencies, VIA’s software overcomes the most common barriers to AI: lack of data, data quality issues, and data privacy concerns. As a result, VIA’s software accelerates the AI required for the clean energy transition. VIA also provides the bridge that enables EVs, battery storage, demand response, and distributed energy resources to be on the grid. Headquartered in Somerville, Massachusetts, with a technology center in Montreal, Quebec, VIA has been featured in Wired and Inc. Magazine for its leadership in technology innovation. For more information, please visit www.solvewithvia.com.
About The Westly Group
The Westly Group invests in smart energy and mobility and has 15 of the world’s larger energy and auto companies as investors. The firm has over $500M AUM and has had six companies go public including Tesla Motors and Luminar.
About Prefix Capital
Prefix Capital is a venture capital firm that invests in early-stage startups with transformational technologies, which can range from biotech and life sciences to next-generation mobility, energy, wireless, and infrastructure platforms to new computing and AI technologies. Prefix Capital’s investment track record includes large exits and portfolio companies that have gone on to raise hundreds of millions of dollars in follow-on capital.
