Arcadia aggregates energy data for companies to build climate-friendly products, raises $200M

Arcadia, a platform that gives companies access to aggregated data on energy usage and pricing to help them build clean energy products, has raised $200 million in a round of funding.

Even with the best will in the world, companies across the industrial spectrum often struggle to mitigate their climate impact simply because they lack sufficient data and insights into all the energy usage that’s happening internally and externally through indirect scope 3 emissions.

As a result, we’re seeing a wealth of new tools and technologies go to market, designed to help companies measure their carbon emissions down through the supply chain, with the likes of Sweep and Greenly attracting investors’ cash in recent times, while the Linux Foundation recently launched OS-C to bring climate impact data to the global finance industry.

Arcadia, for its part, is setting out on a similar mission to help organizations and consumers address their climate impact, by unlocking meter-level usage data and “mapping it to carbon intensity to create real accountability” on scope 1, 2 and 3 emissions.

Big data

Founded in 2014, Arcadia applies its proprietary technology to aggregated utility data and packages it via the Arc platform.

“Businesses don’t have access to the high-fidelity, accurate energy data they need to create innovative energy and climate tech products, or monitor, report and act on their carbon impact,” Arcadia CEO Kiran Bhatraju told VentureBeat. “Data currently lives with hundreds of individual utilities and is neither aggregated nor easily accessible.”

And so, Acadia combines all this data and presents the value as APIs, so companies can develop their own software products on top of this data — it’s a little like what Plaid has been doing in the finance industry for the past decade.

“With ubiquitous access to utility data, companies will be able to leverage the network effects of the data — the more access we can offer, the more valuable and useful it will be to them,” Bhatraju said.

So, what kinds of products does Arcadia actually enable? Well, electric vehicle (EV) manufacturers — or those building products within the EV ecosystem — could provide their own customers with a precise at-home charging cost, without having to figure out exactly what electricity rate they’re on and conducting complex calculations. Moreover, companies can build products that automate EV car charging for times when electricity is at its cheapest, or where the energy is coming from renewable sources such as solar. Companies such as Ford are using Arcadia’s technology for just that.

Elsewhere, Arcadia’s technology can be used by solar and energy storage providers, who can then take over the billing process from the utility company and bundle everything into a simple, own-brand monthly statement, giving the homeowner access to granular data and analytics around their solar energy usage and consumption.

But in truth, Arcadia targets anyone from retail energy providers and smart home manufacturers, to agriculture and carbon-accounting firms.

It’s worth noting that Arcadia also offers customers ways to channel in to renewable energy sources in their own products, for example by offer their customers ways to join a local solar farm as part of their service agreement.

Arcadia had previously raised around $170 million and with another $200 million in the bank — and a freshly attained $1.5 billion valuation — the company said that it plans to double down on its product development and expand its data coverage.

“There isn’t another company with either the data coverage and offering the tools and APIs to build solutions using that data like Arc,” Bhatraju said. “Our investment and expansion will enable new use cases for Arc such as accurate, data-informed ESG (environmental, social and corporate governance) to allow companies to monitor, report and act on their carbon impact.”

Arcadia’s latest funding round was led by J.P. Morgan Asset Management, with participation from Tiger Global Management, Triangle Peak Partners, Camber Creek, Wellington Management, Drawdown Fund, among others.