Opus One founder goals to assist modernize the grid with his newest cleantech startup.
Two years after promoting his final cleantech firm to General Electric (GE), Toronto-based know-how entrepreneur Josh Wong has spun his subsequent one out of GE’s vitality enterprise, GE Vernova, and secured $6.8 million CAD ($5 million USD) in seed funding to gasoline its launch.
With his newest startup, ThinkLabs AI, the Opus One Solutions and Toronto Hydro alum goals to assist utility corporations contend with an already complicated electrical grid that’s turning into much more unpredictable and difficult to handle amid the transition from fossil fuels to clear vitality.
“To electrify, we need the grid … [and] the grid really must modernize.”
Josh Wong, ThinkLabs AI
“My job is not done,” Wong informed BetaKit in an interview. “I’m very mission-oriented and feel the grid remains at the centre of the energy transition. To decarbonize, we need to electrify. To electrify, we need the grid … [and] the grid really must modernize.”
ThinkLabs is growing software program to assist utility management room operators and planners keep grid reliability and cut back bottlenecks and outages at a time when utilities’ workforces are additionally quickly getting older and retiring. Wong, ThinkLabs’ founder and CEO, believes that the cleantech synthetic intelligence (AI) startup could have discovered “the magic formula” for enabling autonomous electrical grid orchestration with “physics-informed AI.”
ThinkLabs’ all-equity, all-primary seed spherical, which closed in early April—coinciding with its spinout from GE Vernova—was co-led by Vancouver-based Active Impact Investments and California’s Powerhouse Ventures, with assist from Toronto-based Amplify Capital, Colorado’s Blackhorn Ventures, Switzerland-based Mercuria Energy, and an undisclosed nationwide United States (US) vitality firm.
“The electrical grid is becoming more complex to manage as distributed energy resources (DERs) and renewables proliferate,” Powerhouse founder and CEO Emily Kirsch informed BetaKit. “Aging physical infrastructure, increasing extreme weather events, and a retiring utility workforce create a more challenging operating context that threatens utilities’ ability to reliably provide electricity to their customers.”
ThinkLabs’ flagship Grid Copilot software program is a digital assistant that makes use of AI-based digital twins to assist electrical utilities extra autonomously orchestrate the grid. Kirsch famous that tech like this will allow utilities to proactively use DERs to each optimize grid capability and cut back outages.
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Active Impact accomplice Sam Hasty informed BetaKit that the local weather tech-focused enterprise capital agency was attracted to ThinkLabs given Wong’s expertise and status, the market tailwinds it sees enjoying within the startup’s favour, and its relationship with GE Vernova.
GE Vernova pre-seeded ThinkLabs and stays a strategic accomplice of ThinkLabs in addition to a shareholder. Wong declined to disclose ThinkLabs’ valuation or the dimensions of GE’s stake.
An influence methods engineer by coaching, Wong has labored in varied elements of the cleantech ecosystem for over 20 years. He beforehand spent practically 5 years at Toronto Hydro, the place he stated he based the smart-grid division and helped lead the primary electric-vehicle charging and neighborhood battery-storage applications.
In 2012, Wong based Toronto-based smart-grid software program startup Opus One, which started as a one-person consulting enterprise and advanced into an energy-distribution management platform to assist utilities handle the complexity of the sustainable vitality grid and alleviate any related constraints or bottlenecks.
After rising it to over 100 staff serving clients throughout eight international locations, Wong offered Opus One to GE in 2022 to take benefit of the latter’s international attain and distribution. Wong declined to disclose the monetary phrases of this acquisition, which Private Capital Journal estimated may need come at a price ticket of $68 million USD.
Following this deal, Wong joined what’s now GE Vernova and stayed centered on the longer term of the electrical grid. While there, he recognized autonomous grid orchestration as a “major game changer,” and GE Vernova’s electrification software program enterprise incubated ThinkLabs and its efforts to discover the thought.
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Wong stated he expects the subsequent 10 years shall be vital for the vitality transition, and he anticipates that software program and AI will play an vital function in facilitating it. “We don’t have time to build [enough] transmission lines and distribution lines in the next decade, so we have to lean into better grid intelligence,” he argued.
Under the management of Wong, who can also be the previous basic supervisor of GE Vernova’s grid orchestration crew, ThinkLabs developed, examined, and validated its AI-powered software program inside GE Vernova.
However, Wong stated they shortly realized that to take this tech to the subsequent degree, they would want to accomplish that as an unbiased agency. “We need to move faster with [external] capital, and so that’s why we created [ThinkLabs] so that we can combine, again, the best of both worlds.”
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ThinkLabs is the primary startup spun out of GE Vernova, which accomplished its personal spinoff from GE and went public final month. Hasty stated GE Vernova and ThinkLabs’ traders have created “a clean spin-out that put the company in a very strong position in terms of autonomy and ownership structure while still ensuring that ThinkLabs and GE’s long-term interests remained aligned.”
“[Wong’s] commitment to lasting impact has been crystal clear,” Amplify Capital managing accomplice Kathryn Wortsman informed BetaKit. “We are proud to support his vision to fast-track the energy transition and disrupt the way large-scale grids operate.”
Wong expects that the subsequent 10 years shall be vital for the vitality transition.
Most members of ThinkLabs’ 10-person crew have joined Wong from GE Vernova. While Wong stays primarily based in Toronto, ThinkLabs has integrated in Delaware and has established a Canadian subsidiary. The startup has staff and traders in Canada and the US, and plans to proceed rising on either side of the border.
Kirsch described ThinkLabs’ capabilities as “a critical step towards supporting the grid during the electrification and renewables era,” and referred to as its crew “uniquely suited to execute on their vision to build the digital backbone of modern grids.”
The startup has already used some of its funding to arrange its operations as an unbiased agency and plans to make investments the steadiness in its product improvement and go-to-market efforts.
ThinkLabs’ software program may help clients detect congestion and voltage violations, perceive utilization, and make suggestions in real-time, and the corporate already counts some undisclosed massive North American utilities as clients, with a pipeline of different prospects by way of GE Vernova.
“We have a very warm start,” Wong stated.
Feature picture courtesy ThinkLabs AI.