Rhizome, which helps power grids manage climate risks, has raised $1 million from San Francisco-based Convective Capital in a seed round, and launched a new product to help utilities in the United States, Canada and Australia prepare for wildfires.
The Washington, D.C.-based startup has previously received $2.5 million in pre-seed funding from New York firms Looking Glass and Everywhere Ventures, and others.
AI to the Rescue
Co-founded by CEO Mishal Thadani and chief technology officer Rahul Dubey, Rhizome has built a state-of-the-art AI platform to help electric utilities mitigate risks from weather phenomena, and also quantify the value of investments to improve resilience from weather- and climate-related risks. Thadani previously founded a solar-based utility, District Solar, besides working at Urbint, which uses AI to identify threats to infrastructure.
“Wildfires are not just a western U.S. issue, they’re occurring across the nation and more frequently than ever,” said Thadani, who earned a civil engineering degree from Rice University. “Now, with new forecasts predicting a hotter-than-usual summer across much of the U.S., addressing wildfire concerns has become a priority.”
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Rhizome’s new product, gridFirm — Fire Ignition Reduction and Mitigation — has been designed to specifically address wildfire risks. Built with data from utilities in the Northeast, Pacific Northwest, and Texas, the tool uses machine learning on top of datasets to assess the likelihood of a utility asset triggering a wildfire.
‘Existential Risk’
The product differentiates itself from other tools in the market by focusing on prevention, rather than detection, pointed out Thadani. gridFIRM also helps utilities assess the effectiveness of investments such as insulating bare conductors, undergrounding, replacing aging assets, deploying reclosers, and others, said Dubey, who earned an MS in computer science and engineering from Oregon Health & Science University.
Convective Capital’s founder and managing partner Bill Clerico called wildfire ignitions an “existential” risk that leads to bankruptcies, fines, and regulatory actions. It costs the industry over $100 billion in the last 10 years, he pointed out. He said his firm’s investment would will help Rhizome “grow even faster and build a safer and more reliable grid.”
