Singularity raises $4.5M seed round to decarbonize the grid and make sense of CO2 emissions data

Singularity Energy, a SaaS platform founded by a team of experts from Harvard, MIT, and
Johns Hopkins, has closed a $4.5 million seed to bring greater data transparency and intelligence to grid decarbonization. Deep decarbonization refers to the types of changes in energy systems that will be required to meet carbon emission reduction and related climate policy goals.

The round was led by Spero Ventures and Energy Impact Partners, with participation from existing investors, including Third Sphere and J Ventures, and other individual investors. In conjunction with the funding, Singularity said that Marc Tarpening, Tesla co-founder and partner at Spero Ventures, will join its board of directors.

Singularity will use the funding proceeds to expand its product and technology roadmap, improve customer success, develop partnerships with key stakeholders, and continue to attract top talent.

Founded by Dr. Wenbo Shi, a Harvard postdoc, the Somerville, Massachusetts-based Singularity takes a scientific and transparent approach to CO2 emissions data calculations, working directly with utilities and grid operators to calculate emissions data based on location and time to provide detailed information about the carbon intensity on the grid at any given moment.

“Three years ago, four years ago, the battery wasn’t really cheap enough to cover all the costs, right?” founder and CEO Wenbo Shi said. “So we spent a lot of time modeling and coming up with new optimization algorithms to really help the customer make the economics work for battery storage.” 

Today, grid operators, utilities, and businesses have a limited understanding of their grid carbon emissions due to the lack of high-quality, time and location-based grid emissions data. Singularity’s mission is to change that by providing transparent and accurate data to grid operators, utilities, and businesses about their grid carbon emissions, while supplying them with actionable decarbonization insights and automated decision making via their platform. Singularity works with Harvard, Sense, Measurabl, Eversource, and several yet-to-be-disclosed grid operators and utilities on decarbonization efforts.

Sense CEO Mike Philips said: “We used Singularity’s intelligent decarbonization platform to demonstrate that automating EV charging can reduce carbon emissions by up to 14% nationwide and 43% in California. We chose Singularity for its high-quality location and time-based emissions data, which play an important role in grid decarbonization. By combining smart home automation with carbon intensity data, we can accelerate emissions reduction in the residential sector as homes electrify.”

“Blackstone estimates that the global decarbonization effort over the next three decades will require a massive $50 trillion investment,” said Wenbo Shi, Singularity Founder and CEO. “We’re excited to have both Spero Ventures and Energy Impact Partners support to help us build the most transparent, complete, and intelligent grid decarbonization tools available to grid operators, utilities, and end-users.”

In addition to the Seed funding round, Singularity has received $1.2 million in grants from the National Science Foundation’s (NSF). The SBIR program aims to fund advanced research and development for cutting-edge scientific and engineering discoveries.

“Unlocking accurate and transparent data has been a critical catalyst for all sorts of innovation historically. Singularity is bringing the best quality carbon data & actionable intelligence to the market, and we are excited to see all the different ways their products get put to use by their broad set of customers. I believe Singularity will have a major impact on decarbonization efforts in the years to come and we are proud to back Wenbo and the team,” said Marc Tarpenning, Venture Partner at Spero Ventures.

“The path to the net-zero economy runs through the electric grid,” said Sameer Reddy, Managing Partner at Energy Impact Partners. “Singularity’s platform provides unprecedented transparency and real-time carbon awareness to utilities, grid operators, and large enterprises across all sectors. With increasing scrutiny around emissions measurement, we believe this is an essential capability for the entire Fortune 1000 and beyond and are excited to be an early investor in the company’s journey.”