Leveraging AI sustainability tech, QiO Technologies is on a mission to support energy-intensive businesses to cut carbon emissions and become more energy efficient. The UK-based startup has just secured over €9.3 million ($10 million) to expand.
Becoming more energy efficient is a core priority for businesses and governments alike. It’s a crucial part of making our planet healthier, mitigating the impact of climate change, and, reducing energy costs amidst times of inflation, supply issues and spiralling prices.
Energy-intensive industries contribute a reported 24.2% of global greenhouse gas emissions each year. They play a key role in making progress on the immediate emissions cuts required to stop the growth of GHG emissions by 2025 and deliver overall reductions of 25% by 2030.
UK-based QiO aims to support this process by leveraging its proprietary Foresight Sustainability Suite™. The team has just secured new funding as it plans global expansion.
Funding details
- Over €9.3 million ($10 million) was raised in a Series B funding round
- Wave Equity Partners led the round
- The funding will be used to expand US and European operations and enhance product development
Founded in 2015, QiO Technologies offers software to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, improve resource efficiency, and accelerate operational sustainability for Industrial Companies, Data Centers and Telecom operators.
Rick Haythornthwaite, Co-Founder and Chairman of QiO Technologies: “Energy-intensive industries and data centres have a crucial role to play in achieving a low-carbon economy. Our mission is for QiO to be the partner of choice for businesses that want to take decisive action today to accelerate their progress to net zero. With our proven technology, demonstrable track record of delivering energy and GHG emissions savings and this Series B funding, QiO is well-placed to support energy-intensive businesses as they come under greater scrutiny from customers, investors, regulators and governments to deliver on net zero targets.”
The startup developed its Foresight Sustainability Suite™ to help companies better leverage data to reduce GHG emissions and become more efficient. With its AI optimization technology in sectors ranging from automotive, steel, glass, cement, oil & gas, data centres and telecoms, Foresight Sustainability Suite™ has delivered up to 20% savings on energy and maintenance costs and reduced GHG emissions by up to 10%.
The software collects data from assets like kilns, furnaces, boilers and compressors to cooling systems and data centre servers. Using AI, it is able to identify and implement real-time actions that optimize energy efficiency and resource use, helping customers make rapid reductions in GHG emissions, energy use, production costs and waste.
The UK-born company has also recently launched Foresight Optima DC+™, which was developed in partnership with Intel to meet the needs of energy-intensive data centres, which consume around 3% of the world’s electricity and produce about 2% of total GHG emissions.
QiO estimates its products could deliver up to 10% of the total GHG reduction required to meet the 2030 Paris Agreement goal for limiting global temperature rises to 1.5-2°C.
Now with this latest investment, the plan is to expand operations in the USA and Europe, develop the product further and pick up more customers.
Mark Robinson, Co-Founder and Managing Partner of Wave Equity Partners: “The companies we invest in are responsible for developing innovations that lead us toward a healthier, more hospitable planet. QiO has built the market-leading innovative Foresight Sustainability Suite ™ that uses the power of AI to solve environmental challenges on a global scale. We are excited to partner with QiO to support their ambition to contribute substantially to overcoming the challenges of climate change.”
