David Energy Raises $23 Million to Run the Grid 24/7/365 on Clean Energy

September 23, 2024
North America

Led by Cathay Innovation, the round will provide capital to expand its commercial and residential businesses across the Northeast and Texas

New York, NY – September 23, 2024 at 5 AM ET – David Energy, a trailblazing gridtech company, announced today that it has secured $23 million in funding to transform the retail energy market and make a clean energy grid a reality. The investment was led by Cathay Innovation, with participation from prior investors Union Square Ventures, Keyframe Capital, Equal Ventures, and BoxGroup, among others. The new funds will support David Energy’s mission to run the grid 24/7/365 on clean energy.
Amidst a backdrop of an aging electrical grid, unprecedented weather volatility, frequent power outages, and rising electricity demand, the need for a cheaper and more resilient grid is accelerating. While clean energy sources like solar and wind are now the most affordable form of power, their intermittent nature makes it difficult to harness at scale. David Energy, named for empowering customers with distributed energy resources (DERs) to challenge today’s “Goliath” energy companies, is building the solution: a distributed network of connected devices – think batteries, solar panels, EVs, and smart thermostats – that can respond to the fluctuations of clean energy generation in real-time.
As a technology-driven retail electricity provider (REP), it’s also modernizing the consumer experience while doing so. The energy industry, notorious for being opaque and riddled with scams, can be hard for most to navigate. David Energy uses its vertically-integrated solution to drive transparency – clarifying what consumers need to know, advising on what they don’t know, and providing a platform that handles the complexities in between.
Since its founding in 2019, David Energy has launched residential and commercial electricity solutions. Following its Series A round of funding in March 2022, it scaled its commercial offering, an energy spend management platform for multi-unit businesses, from serving only New York to now include over 1,000 locations across New York, New Jersey, Massachusetts, and Texas. Its commercial business has grown 198% Year-over-year and attracted more than 60 new brands, including Equinox, Wing Stop, Subway and Orangetheory. The company also launched its residential offering, which offers EV and battery owners more ROI and control over their devices, in Texas. The number of David Energy-connected devices has grown 10x since last year.

This latest funding round enables the company to continue scaling both business lines in its active states and begin expanding across the Northeast and Mid-Atlantic. David Energy’s growth strategy is underpinned by its larger 10-year vision: decarbonizing the energy sector – the largest contributor to climate change – by becoming the operating system of the 100% clean energy grid. By acquiring both residential and commercial customers, it is building a customer base that naturally aligns with when renewable sources are active as well as the controllable capacity to cover the fluctuations. Homes and businesses alike will ultimately benefit from greater ROI and control of their devices and cheaper, more reliable energy.

“The core challenge in operating modern grids is managing the volatility brought on by renewables,” said James McGinniss, CEO of David Energy. “No grid operator, retailer, or vertically integrated utility across the globe has solved this problem and that’s precisely what we intend to do. Since renewables are essentially free when they’re producing, there is a massive opportunity to supply structurally cheaper power to customers. This investment gives us the capital we need to validate this opportunity and our approach to decarbonizing the grid.”

“David Energy is completely redefining what it means to be a retail energy provider with a modern, tech-forward and vertically integrated approach designed for the clean energy era,” said Simon Wu, Partner with Cathay Innovation. “They’ve demonstrated strong, repeatable growth and stickiness, particularly with the underserved segment of small commercial businesses, led by a team that combines deep energy market expertise and technical product leadership which are critical elements for success. David Energy is primed to scale and we’re thrilled to support James and the team on the journey ahead.”

David Energy will be hosting an event about what it will take to run the grid on clean energy 24/7/365 today at Climate Week NYC. For more details go here: bit.ly/cleanenergygrid.

About David Energy
David Energy is a technology-driven retail energy provider (REP) with the mission of running the grid on clean energy 24/7/365. By building a network of connected devices that respond to the fluctuations of clean energy generation in real-time, it is decarbonizing the largest contributor to climate change – the energy sector. It currently serves the electricity needs of residents in Texas as well as multi-unit business owners in New York, New Jersey, Massachusetts, and Texas. Since its launch in 2019, David Energy has raised $50M from venture capital and strategic investors. For more information, visit davidenergy.com.