GridCARE, a pioneering grid intelligence company, has officially emerged from stealth with a $13.5 million seed round, aiming to resolve one in every of artificial intelligence’s most pressing bottlenecks: access to reliable power. The oversubscribed round was led by Xora, a deep tech enterprise firm backed by Temasek, with participation from a coalition of climate, AI, and infrastructure-focused investors.
The timing couldn’t be more urgent. The worldwide AI market is projected to succeed in $757.6 billion by 2025 and grow to $3.68 trillion by 2034, in line with Precedence Research. This explosive trajectory is placing unprecedented strain on the world’s power grids. The International Energy Agency (IEA) forecasts that electricity demand from data centers will greater than double by 2030, with AI leading the charge. The U.S. alone is anticipated to see data centers account for nearly half of all recent electricity demand growth, soon surpassing the energy use of entire heavy industries like steel, cement, and chemicals.
said Amit Narayan, CEO and founding father of GridCARE.
AI-Powered Grid Evaluation to Speed up Data Center Buildouts
Slightly than waiting five to seven years for brand new substations and interconnections, GridCARE enables developers to bring AI infrastructure online in only 6–12 months. The corporate’s platform uses Generative AI and grid physics modeling to pinpoint underutilized electricity capability across hundreds of utility networks.
This “time-to-power” optimization allows developers to deploy GPUs and CPUs faster—essential in a competitive landscape where the AI model arms race is defined not only by the very best algorithms, but by who can run them at scale first.
GridCARE acts as a bridge between utility firms and hyperscalers, simplifying complex, fragmented processes around grid access. Developers can offload the burden of power acquisition while utilities gain recent revenue opportunities and higher utilization of existing assets.
said Peter Freed, former Director of Energy Strategy at Meta and now a partner at Latest Horizon Group.
From Stanford to the Smart Grid Frontier
GridCARE’s team is steeped in experience on the intersection of energy, AI, and sustainability. CEO Amit Narayan holds a PhD from UC Berkeley and previously founded AutoGrid, a climate-AI company acquired by Schneider Electric. He began applying chip-level signal optimization techniques to the electrical grid over a decade ago while collaborating with Stanford’s Precourt Energy Institute.
Co-founders include:
- Ram Rajagopal, Stanford professor and AI-for-energy systems expert
- Liang Min, Director at Stanford’s Bits & Watts initiative
- Arun Majumdar, Founding Dean of Stanford’s Doerr School of Sustainability and former VP of Energy at Google
Their collective mission: to unlock strategic flexibility from the grid without constructing recent fossil-fuel infrastructure.
Utilities Embrace GridCARE for Smarter Infrastructure Planning
GridCARE isn’t just popular with developers—it’s quickly gaining traction amongst utilities like Portland General Electric (PGE) and Pacific Gas & Electric (PG&E).
said Larry Bekkedahl, SVP at PGE.
PG&E’s EVP Jason Glickman echoed this sentiment:
GridCARE also promotes a forward-looking concept often called Power Caching—a localized energy strategy akin to edge computing. Just as edge networks bring incessantly accessed data closer to users to cut back latency, power caching co-locates energy generation near AI data centers to cut back grid stress and transmission losses.
By supporting localized generation at the positioning of consumption, Power Caching improves resilience and eliminates long-distance power congestion—an increasingly common issue in gigawatt-scale AI clusters.
Strategic Backing and Vision for Scale
GridCARE’s backers include:
- Breakthrough Energy (founded by Bill Gates)
- Sherpalo Ventures
- WovenEarth
- Clearvision
- Clocktower Ventures
- AI and energy visionaries like Tom Steyer, Ram Shriram, Balaji Prabhakar, and Gokul Rajaram
Their involvement reflects growing recognition that solving AI’s power crisis will define the subsequent decade of innovation.
said Phil Inagaki, CIO of Xora.
Powering the AI Revolution Starts with Reimagining the Grid
As generative AI reshapes the whole lot from search engines like google to scientific discovery, the race to scale these models hinges not only on algorithms, but on electricity. GridCARE is stepping in where others are stuck—transforming how power is sourced, modeled, and delivered for the AI age.
With deep tech roots, a founding team shaped by Stanford’s sustainability mission, and a platform that turns gigawatt-scale grid complexity into actionable opportunity, GridCARE isn’t just accelerating infrastructure—it’s laying the muse for AI’s next step forward.
