Although companies are sometimes hesitant to take on costs to reduce carbon emissions, Seattle-based Phaidra has developed a carbon reduction platform that helps companies reduce costs while becoming more energy-efficient.
The company, which was founded in 2019, recently secured $25 million in Series A financing from Starshot Capital and other existing investors. According to Crunchbase, the company has raised $30.5 million in funding since launching.
Phaidra’s AI platform is meant for use in industrial settings, like steel mills or data centers, and improves energy efficiency through reinforcement learning, a machine learning style where a system learns through trial and error and is rewarded when it reaches the desired outcome.
When integrated in an industrial setting, the platform learns the ins and outs of the operations and is able to adjust the energy usage in real-time. While other energy management systems are not able to adjust to adjust to plant conditions, Phaidra’s dynamic technology helps facilities run as efficiently as possible, which according to the company, often results in less energy waste and increases in profitability.
“Technologies that enable companies to be more profitable and efficient while simultaneously reducing their emissions are critical to addressing the climate crisis,” Jeremy Brewer, managing partner of Starshot Capital, said in a statement. “We are delighted to support Phaidra as they transform the industrial sector.”
The company’s platform is used by several Fortune 500 companies and was founded by tech veterans who worked on Google’s Deepmind program, an AI research laboratory that made significant strides in artificial intelligence and machine learning.
“At DeepMind, my co-founders and I saw first-hand how deep reinforcement learning was creating breakthroughs in multiple real-world applications. We started Phaidra to bring the benefits of this technology beyond the tech companies to the industrial sector,” Jim Gao, CEO of Phaidra, said in a statement.
