David Energy Announces $20.5M Series A

Accelerating our mission to build a cleaner, cheaper, more resilient grid

Today we announced our $20.5M Series A co-led by Keyframe Capital and Union Square Ventures’ designated climate fund. They, alongside existing Seed investors Equal Ventures and Box Group, will be invaluable partners to us as we build the future of energy. We are also excited to welcome Keyframe’s Ben Birnbaum and USV’s Rebecca Kaden, who bring together the best of technology and energy, to our team. Finally, we wanted to say a heartfelt thank you to our team, our customers, and our partners - we would not be here without your support.

What We’re Building and Why It Matters

The grid faces massive challenges today. First, power outages across the country are on the rise as our infrastructure decays and we continue to underinvest in resilience. Faced with these increased outages, customers are taking matters into their own hands and investing in backup power sources, also known as distributed energy resources (DERs). This is driving massive growth in devices like electric vehicles, heat pumps, rooftop solar, generators, and more, as shown in the chart below.

Second, volatility in energy markets is growing as intermittent renewable energy resources proliferate thanks to plummeting costs. Incumbent energy providers are not financially prepared for the impact of such volatility on their business, as shown by the recent collapse of several UK retailers and Griddy’s implosion in Texas last February. While growth in renewable energy resources is a great step towards decarbonizing our grid, we are not prepared for the realities of a high-renewables-penetration grid and how that will impact customers.

Third, Americans are experiencing an unprecedented rise in energy prices and other commodities, thanks in part to the Russian invasion of Ukraine squeezing oil supply and rampant inflation impacting everything from energy to rents to food. Moreover, this price inflation will hit low- and middle-income Americans and small businesses the hardest, as those segments lack access to the capital or technologies needed to mitigate inflation’s effects.

The main takeaway from these trends is that the way Americans interact with the grid is fundamentally changing and existing institutions are structurally unable to adapt to this emerging paradigm. That creates an opening for a new solution to emerge: one that lowers costs for customers, slows climate change by helping renewable energy resources integrate into the grid, and, most importantly, improves grid resiliency for everyone. 

That’s precisely what we are building at David Energy – the operating system for the modern, distributed grid. We bundle the purchase of electricity together with a powerful software platform that integrates directly with customer devices to deliver control, insights, and savings. And instead of charging customers for that software, we instead monetize by taking a portion of the savings generated through our platform. We don’t win unless our customers win. 

Our model destroys the traditional misalignment of incentives between an energy retailer and its customers. Unlike incumbents, we don’t care how much power our customers use, rather we care how cost-effectively it is being used, both for the customer and for us. This alignment of economic incentives is a true differentiator and one we believe gives us an edge over other suppliers and device aggregators alike. We are proud of the deep energy and software expertise embedded in David Energy’s DNA and believe it is this combination that will enable us to deliver on our mission of building a cheaper, greener, and more resilient grid.

Where We Go From Here

Our journey over the last year has been defined by 2 key themes: first, understanding the power of our bundled energy and software product, and second finding product market fit within the small and medium-size business (SMB) segment. We’ve spent the last 9 months focused on building out our platform, expanding our device integration coverage, and honing our early go-to-market motion within the SMB segment.

Now, we are excited to use this capital to ramp up the sales engine in our target SMB segment while debuting an early beta of our Residential product in New York. And, later this year, we plan to expand our offering into Texas, where we are excited to start integrating devices like generators and crypto mines into our portfolio of devices.

If you’re excited about our vision of the future of the grid and want to work with us, please check out our open roles. And if you think David Energy could be a valuable partner to you, please get in touch! We’re extremely proud to introduce transparency, modernity, and sustainability to the traditionally opaque and commoditized energy industry, and hope you will join us in that mission.