By Andre Turenne, Vice President of Pathfinding & Incubation at National Grid Partners

“APERIO is the missing piece of the industrial data value chain,” says Jonas Hellgren, CEO of the Boston-based startup. “We’re solving a problem that’s been around for more than 30 years.”

He’s not exaggerating: Industrial companies have tried and failed for decades to guarantee the integrity of all the data spread across their respective enterprises. The problem’s been too difficult and too large to solve.

Until now.

Powered by AI machine learning, APERIO automatically validates operational data at scale to improve accuracy, security, and value, allowing for smarter business decisions based on superior data. Their end-to-end technological workflow identifies bad data through anomaly detection, then resolves it quickly to enable smarter operations with guaranteed accuracy across the industrial value chain.

APERIO’s technology is something NGP, and perhaps the entire energy industry, was waiting to invest in.

Why NGP Invested

Let’s review some facts.

  • Data is growing exponentially, but much of it is unused, underused, or untrustworthy.
  • Data integrity is foundational to every application in the digital transformation journey; it’s the necessary software layer between the source of the data (e.g. data lakes, SCADA systems) and the applications of that same data (visualization, analytics, optimization, predictive maintenance, etc.).
  • Data that’s not accurate — whether that be from the control room to the board room — is essentially worthless.
  • Poor data quality causes operational risk: Higher asset downtime, inaccurately represented metrics, and lower confidence in decision making. It’s been estimated that in 2021, due to poor data, U.S. companies lost $3.1 trillion in revenue.

In short, data integrity is incredibly important, especially today.

This is where APERIO comes in. It was clear to the NGP team that the company’s successes across its broad customer base, including Fortune 500 companies, proved its position as the leader in the data integrity sector.

That recognition as a category leader, along with APERIO’s technological successes and wide applicability across operations, provided us with plenty of reasons to invest.

Superior Data, Superior Sustainability

A company’s profitability is increasingly being tied to its sustainability outcomes. In the ambitious pursuit of Net Zero by 2050, operators require accurate, reliable data for improved visibility and decision making. Greater awareness and transparency through accurate reporting builds trust with customers, shareholders, employees, regulators and the broader community.

When applied, AI models built on validated data are expected to help reduce emissions by greater than 20 percent.

APERIO’s capability to continuously monitor assets, onsite or remotely, can ensure environmental, safety, and regulatory specifications are met without the need for regularly scheduled physical inspections. It can help utility customers optimize energy usage and reduce carbon emissions in real time. Its machine learning predicts asset behavior to avoid unplanned downtime and improve reliability.

By providing guaranteed data quality for its customers, APERIO positions itself to help energy companies combat climate change and support the sustainability goals of the communities they serve.

As Jonas puts it, APERIO lets customers trust their data again. NGP is excited to back APERIO as they continue to lead the way in data integrity solutions.

in silos.” Developing and deploying the next wave of solutions hinges, we believe, on combining the creative power of startups with the scale and experience of utilities.

But startups and utilities often don’t know how to work together; one side’s mantra is “move fast,” while the other is heavily regulated. The NextGrid Alliance is a translator of sorts, providing insights and brokering introductions.

Make no mistake: Energy titans will be born during this downturn, just as Amazon and Netflix fought through the dot-com crash (and disrupted established industries in the process). Or, more recently, as Nest survived the Cleantech 1.0 bubble to reap a $3.2 billion acquisition from Google.

I’ve spent decades as a venture investor studying industries in transition, and believe me: The energy sector is just beginning to be disrupted.