With funding from leading climate venture capital, energy, and insurance investors, the round will allow Sunairio to grow its team and expand the availability of new climate simulation technology with 1,000 times the resolution of traditional models.
BALTIMORE, Dec. 20, 2024 /PRNewswire-51¸£Àû/ -- , the first software company to leverage high-resolution climate data to simulate energy asset risk and grid variability, today announced the close of an oversubscribed $6.4 million round of financing. The round was led by , alongside and ' Climate Tech Fund, with additional participation from and existing Sunairio investors. This brings the total amount that Sunairio has raised to date to $8.8 million.
Leading renewables investors, energy traders, and utilities rely on Sunairio to help manage unprecedented grid volatility caused by a perfect storm of power market fundamentals: greater intermittency from the increasing deployment of wind and solar, surging power demand from electrification and data centers, and more frequent weather extremes due to climate change.
Founded by Rob Cirincione, an energy trading veteran, Sunairio invented a high-fidelity, probabilistic climate model to address the rapidly increasing volatility in power grids on both the supply and demand side. Sunairio forecasts the medium- and long-term (15 days to 15 years) variability of renewable energy power production and fluctuations in energy demand — including tail risks from extreme weather events not captured by historic datasets. Unlike traditional, computationally intense, physics-based climate models that only predict average regional weather, Sunairio incorporates advanced statistics and generative AI to produce site-specific, asset-level climate simulations that integrate with existing energy modeling tools to support commercial decision making.
Sunairio's research into generative AI for climate simulation (NSF) earlier in 2024. The Sunairio platform is now trusted by businesses throughout the energy sector. Examples include:
- the recently announced grid planning , a major U.S. energy company;
- using the platform's high-resolution climate simulation to help analyze its growing customer offsite renewables portfolio;
- and contracts with global renewables developers and commodity trading firms.
Available today in four U.S. power market regions and select utility footprints, Sunairio's fundraise will enable the company to significantly expand its market coverage and build its team.
"We're looking forward to offering Sunairio insights for every wind farm, solar farm, demand center, utility grid, and power market in North America, which will pave the way for higher investor returns and greater reliability," said Sunairio Founder and CEO Rob Cirincione.
"Modeling grid risk requires a nuanced understanding of climate risk," said Alex Behar, Principal at Buoyant Ventures. "Sunairio's commercially ready grid modeling solutions provide the practical tools necessary to account for weather variability and climate trends as the integration of renewable energy generation accelerates."
"While nuclear energy is a clean, reliable source of 24/7 carbon-free power, other generation sources in our portfolio are affected by weather variability," said Jorge Acevedo, Senior Vice President, Commercialization and Development at Constellation. "Customers are also interested in renewable energy solutions generated by weather-dependent resources like wind and solar farms, which makes investing in a platform that can better value those risks attractive to us."
Timothy Krysiek, Managing Partner at MassMutual Ventures' Climate Tech Fund, commented, "We invest in founders with domain expertise and commercial acumen to tackle major climate challenges — including grid planning and investment. Rob and his team are creating new tools to solve the problems he experienced firsthand during his long career as an energy trader. The founding team has leveraged their experiences in energy and risk management to build a customer base across the energy value chain, including traders, project developers, asset owners, and utility planners."
"We're bringing together a group of investors whose expertise perfectly matches the breadth of issues we're climate, energy, and risk management," said Cirincione. "I'm thrilled to welcome Buoyant, Constellation, and MassMutual Ventures onto the Sunairio team, and I couldn't be more excited about our prospects."
To learn more about Sunairio or to contact the team, visit .
About Sunairio
Sunairio is the first software platform to leverage high-resolution historical climate data and high-resolution future climate simulation for energy investment, planning, and portfolio management. Sunairio helps utility-scale asset developers, energy traders, and reliability organizations make better commercial decisions in the face of increasing grid variability and unprecedented weather. Sunairio was awarded an NSF Small Business Innovation Research grant for its energy-industry-focused climate simulation technology in 2024. For more information, visit .
About Buoyant Ventures
Buoyant Ventures is a female-led venture fund investing in entrepreneurs using digital technology to mitigate and adapt to climate change. Buoyant invests in startups leveraging software and simple hardware to address climate change across the energy, mobility, agriculture, water, circular economy, and the built environment sectors. For more information, visit buoyant.vc.
About Constellation Technology Ventures
Constellation Technology Ventures (CTV) is the venture investing organization within Constellation, the United States' largest producer of clean, carbon-free energy and a leading supplier of energy products and services to businesses, homes, community aggregations and public sector customers. The mission of CTV is to drive innovation by investing in venture-stage energy technology companies that can provide new solutions to Constellation and its customers. CTV invests in companies exploring innovative energy technologies and business models, building a portfolio that represents a broad range of development stages and technology types.
About MassMutual Ventures
MassMutual Ventures (MMV) is a multistage global venture capital firm investing in financial technology, enterprise SaaS, healthtech, climate technology and cybersecurity companies. With teams based in Boston, London, and Singapore, MMV manages over $1 billion in investment capital across the globe. We help accelerate the growth of the companies we partner with by providing capital, connections and advice. With our deep expertise and extensive network, MMV helps entrepreneurs build compelling and scalable companies of value. For more information, visit .
Media Contact
Nikki Arnone, Inflection Point Agency for Sunairio, 1 (719) 357-8344, [email protected],
SOURCE Inflection Point Agency for Sunairio
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