We had the pleasure of sitting down with Josh Wong, the Founder and CEO of ThinkLabs AI (ThinkLabs). Uniquely positioned with his rich experience at the intersection of power systems engineering, AI, and cloud computing, Josh is leading ThinkLabs’ grand vision to fundamentally revolutionize the energy sector through AI-driven solutions.

ThinkLabs’ Origin Story

Growing up in Canada and frequently traveling to the United States, Josh was always fascinated with energy.  He remembers being puzzled by the scarcity of solar panels in North America, which sparked his curiosity and led him to pursue a power engineering degree. He started his career as a Smart Grid Engineering Lead at Toronto Hydro, where he worked on first-of-a-kind smart grid-community battery storage solutions, microgrids, sensors, smart metering, and data analytics. In 2011, Josh founded Opus One Solutions, a company that quickly became a leader in grid Distributed Energy Resources Management Systems (DERMS). Opus One was later acquired by GE, where Josh became part of the energy team and helped the company define the grid of the future. ThinkLabs was incubated within GE Vernova (a spinout of GE; now a public company providing electrical power systems) ) and subsequently spun ThinkLabs out of GE Vernova, with a mission to bring greater autonomy to the power grid using AI.

ThinkLabs’ Solution

ThinkLabs addresses a critical issue in the energy sector: the need for reliable, clean, and affordable energy with speed and scale. The electric grid, an analog and complex 130-year-old interconnected system of physical infrastructure, requires significant modernization to support the electrification necessary for decarbonization and to meet our near-term energy demands.

ThinkLabs envisions an AI-driven approach to grid management, akin to the autopilot systems used in autonomous driving and aviation. By leveraging what Josh calls “physics- or engineering-informed AI”, ThinkLabs makes processes like dynamic planning and grid orchestration more automated, accurate, and instantaneous. “We can leverage the trustworthiness of engineering, but the speed, scale, and pre-trained readiness of AI. That’s the dream: can we basically cruise control our way through the energy transition?”

Image Credits: Jason Hawke via Unsplash

Why Now?

The urgency for grid modernization cannot be overstated. “The next 10 years will write the history books on how the grid evolves over the next half century,” asserts Josh. Utilities, traditionally slow to innovate, are now facing immense pressure to adapt given a proliferation of extreme weather events, workforce shortages, and increasing demand for electricity amidst nationwide decarbonization targets and federal regulation. Utilities are also increasingly seeing the value in transitioning from legacy systems to more advanced, data-driven approaches. The ability to integrate vast amounts of data and utilize AI for real-time and predictive analytics and optimization is unlocking capabilities previously not available. “Right now, there is a lot of industry education required when engaging with utilities. But once they see it, they understand it,” Josh says. 

Image Credits: US Energy Information Administration

Image Credits: BloombergNEF

How ThinkLabs Leverages AI

ThinkLabs leverages physics- or engineering-informed AI, a concept that integrates traditional power systems engineering with AI applications. “Our focus is engineering-based systems, and when we think about those mission-critical systems, we all go back to the textbooks we studied back in school. So how do we bring the textbooks from the traditional world of mathematics, physics, and engineering to AI? The best way is to teach AI how to do physics,” explains Josh.

This approach involves training AI models with large amounts of data to become a surrogate model for real-world physics. Another key benefit of using AI to do engineering is that feedback loops exist, whereby processes like model validation and optimization become increasingly accurate the more data the AI ingests.

ThinkLabs’ technology enables utilities to make the grid more efficient, reliable, and resilient: “In the world of engineering, we also do scenario analysis – assume three scenarios, crunch your numbers, pick the one in the middle. But AI allows us to run thousands and millions of scenarios, so when the time comes, the model is pre-trained: if you have too much solar, it knows exactly what to do. If there are too many electric vehicles charging at once, it knows exactly what to do. It’s instantaneous.”

Image Credits: Shraga Kopstein via Unsplash

Josh’s Advice for Aspiring AI Entrepreneurs

When asked for advice for those looking to start an AI company, Josh offers a thoughtful perspective: “I would say focus on use cases. I think too many people jump into this space because of the AI bandwagon, but really at the end of the day, what matters is what type of business value you drive and how you can do things 10x better.”

Josh emphasizes the importance of a deep understanding of the fundamentals, whether on the engineering or AI side. He advises, “So not just – ‘here’s the data set, apply AI and see what you get’. Dig one level deeper and apply first principles – that can really help differentiate yourself from others.”

To sign up for updates on ThinkLabs’ progress, open roles, and for more information on their mission, visit https://www.thinklabs.ai/.

Genesia Tang: Summer Internship Reflection

This summer, I had the privilege of joining Blackhorn Ventures as an MBA Summer Associate through the Impact Capital Managers’ Mosaic Fellowship program, which aims to place underrepresented graduate school students into leading impact investing funds. I had an incredible experience at Blackhorn with my first foray into the world of investing, having previously held advising and operating roles in public sector consulting and at a late-stage, venture-backed mobility startup. As my internship concludes, I would like to share some reflections from my 10 weeks here:

The commercialization of a startup is paramount – a viable product must not only solve a problem, but do so at scale. This summer, I had the opportunity to participate in and lead 15+ company due diligence calls across our four Blackhorn verticals – energy, transportation, supply chain, and the built environment. Through that experience, I quickly came to realize that while many startups have a compelling product or solution, they underestimate the criticality of go-to-market and capital efficiency. “What would it take for you to get to [x] revenue target?” “What would it take for you to get to the next fundraising round?” As my Blackhorn team members posed pointed and insightful questions at company founders, I too was learning in that process.

 Blackhorn prides itself in going above and beyond to support its portfolio companies

One of my key projects this summer was helping a Blackhorn portfolio company define their market opportunity and identify a number of market expansion strategies. This analysis was prompted by investor feedback in their most recent fundraising efforts, and I could clearly see the impact of my work in equipping the team with more robust analysis and additional data points going into their future investor meetings. Beyond this project, I feel lucky that Blackhorn is a fund that prides itself in going above and beyond to support its portfolio companies. As a result, I had the chance to witness and participate in a number of platform activities, including syndicate-building, partnerships management, financial modeling, and operations support.

In venture, not only do we invest in early-stage startups, we operate like one, too.

I was pleasantly surprised this summer at the degree of autonomy and ownership in my role, as well as the culture of entrepreneurial spirit, flexibility, and agility across the broader team. Even in my initial interview at Blackhorn, one of our Managing Partners, Melissa, emphasized that the most successful investors at the fund are the “utility players” – self-reliant and proactive. This had proven to be true this summer, where my willingness to dive into new projects was rewarded with significant learning and growth. I had the opportunity to spearhead a follow-on investment deal, lead company diligence calls, formulate an investment thesis on a sector that was entirely new to me, and support internal fundraising efforts. An important skill in venture lies in determining what to do, where to dig, and who to talk to.

The drive towards achieving net zero is palpable in this space, and we cannot lose momentum.

More than anything, I am walking away from my internship experience feeling newly energized and motivated about working in climate. This summer, I had the chance to meet so many talented and passionate founders, both within and outside the Blackhorn portfolio, who are committed to driving progress towards global net zero targets. The entire Blackhorn team as well, of course, is aligned around our mission of enhancing industrial resource efficiency and accelerating decarbonization. Whether as an innovator, operator, investor, or advisor, there is so much work to be done in this space, and I am eager to see where our collective efforts will take us.

I can’t thank the entire Blackhorn team enough for an incredible summer of learning. I will be returning to my MBA at Harvard Business School in the fall, but will continue to cheer the Blackhorn team on from the sidelines.

Yahli Einav: Summer Internship Reflection

This summer I had the unique opportunity to Intern at Blackhorn Ventures for 10 weeks. Through my internship I was exposed to Blackhorn as a whole, from investing, internal operations, assisting portfolio companies, and reporting to limited partners. Building on two years of my Management Science & Engineering degree at Stanford, as well as a previous internship at a smaller early-stage fund, my experiences with the Blackhorn team, and focusing on climate and the industrial world, was incredibly interesting and rewarding. As my summer comes to a close, below are some of my primary takeaways and lessons.

1. There is an enormous under-water iceberg of infrastructure that operates as the backbone of consumer facing technology. Working within a climate fund, focused on the industrial world between the Built Environment, Energy, Supply Chain, and Transportation, I was exposed to many areas of technology that an average consumer rarely considers. Learning about the infrastructure that supports our everyday lifestyles – cloud technology, phones, internet, delivery services, among an infinite number of other outputs – I’ve gained a new outlook on the world and the opportunities below the surface.

2. The tech and VC landscape is trending towards the inherent point of technology: making existing systems more efficient. Every single one of the 10+ deals I had exposure to this summer focused on solutions that made an industrial process more efficient, whether expediting construction processes, eliminating bottlenecks in the supply chain, or expediting the energy transition by accelerating the deployment of infrastructure.

3. As an early stage investor, you can learn about a market after learning about a company, however, a more productive strategy is becoming an expert on a vertical, and then deciding what companies to search for. As a thesis driven fund, Blackhorn is able to have a calculated and concentrated investment pool driven by vertical expertise. During my summer, I worked on an extensive Data Center research project. Becoming knowledgeable about the area, prior to meeting with founders, allowed me to have a clearer understanding of where the best opportunities lie.

4. There is much more to the role than investing. While seeking out companies and doing diligence is still the core of the work, the early-stage investor is also a regular consultant to its existing portfolios, an internal entrepreneurial operator, and a client facing operator with regard to limited partners, which offers a wide range of experience in working on with number of largely different people, teams, and companies.

Overall, my experience and extensive learning this summer would not have been possible without the fantastic team and mentors at Blackhorn. I’m incredibly grateful for the opportunity I had this summer, and am excited for what the future holds for Blackhorn and industrial climate investing globally.

Blackhorn Ventures is thrilled to share our 2023 Impact Report. 

View the report below or download it by clicking on this link or on the image above.

(Make sure to click the fullscreen button on the viewer below to have the best experience. It is in the tool panel on the top of the viewer and just to the right of the zoom slider; it looks like a square made of just the corners.)

In an era where automation and AI are transforming industries, Saman Farid, Founder and CEO of Formic Technologies, stands out as a visionary driving manufacturing productivity. With his background in engineering and venture capital, Saman brings a unique perspective to the challenges and opportunities in this sector.

Formic’s Origin Story

Saman’s career began as an engineer, building manufacturing facilities across China and the US. After launching, scaling, and exiting a software company, he spent over ten years as a venture capitalist at Baidu Ventures investing at the intersection of AI, machine learning, and the physical world. From this vantage point, he identified a clear market gap: “There was a tremendous opportunity to improve the adoption of robotics and AI in the physical world,” Saman notes. “The tools were thriving in Silicon Valley but had very, very limited adoption in the real world. I realized that if I didn’t start this company now, I’d regret it for the rest of my life.” In 2020, Saman left to found Formic.

Formic’s Solution

Formic is automating processes to address the critical labor shortage in the manufacturing industry. With the number of unfilled US manufacturing jobs projected to hit 2.1 million by 2030, factories often sit idle, unable to meet production demands. Formic’s robotics solutions help fill these labor gaps, while enhancing factory productivity and production quality.

Image Credits: Stanley Yuan via X

Saman highlights why fewer than 10 percent of American manufacturers utilize industrial robotics: high complexity, lack of expertise, and prohibitive upfront costs. “Factories that are not familiar with this technology have a hard time making an investment in something they believe is such a huge risk”, he explains, “What Formic does to resolve those concerns is provide the full service offering. Factories pay us an hourly rate for the robots to do a job and we do everything, from the system design, to deployment, to maintenance. This end-to-end solution takes the pain and headache away and makes their lives easier.”

Formic’s Customers and How Formic Delivers Value

Formic’s manufacturer customer base includes food and beverage, aerospace and defense, and healthcare products. Today, Formic’s robots operate in nearly 100 manufacturing facilities, each customized for specific production tasks such as packing or stacking.

The company has achieved a 98% contract renewal rate, a testament to the value and reliability of Formic’s solutions. “It speaks to the fact that we solve a critical need in our customers’ production processes,” Saman notes. “We provide service and uptime guarantees, perform all necessary maintenance, and use our software to remotely manage and diagnose issues. As a result, the customer has peace of mind that their production process won’t be stopped because of us.”

The Role of Software in Formic’s Solutions

Beyond robotics hardware, Formic has built automation software that enhances robotic efficiency, reliability, and adaptability.

A key application of this software is creating digital twins of customers’ factories, which helps Formic determine each facility’s idiosyncratic requirements. The software selects and designs the optimal robots and processes, which before Formic, required significant engineering resources.

Formic Core is the company’s proprietary operating system, which feeds data at the robot level back to Formic’s central command center. “It allows us to automatically generate the programs that run on the robot,” Saman explains. “Today the robot may be working on one product and tomorrow they may be working on another. The robot needs to be adaptive to all those different requirements, so Formic Core allows our customers to quickly switch between different tasks, instantly generate the robot program, and validate it to that task.”

Formic’s Future Vision

Saman highlights the significance of building a company in manufacturing automation at a time of unprecedented growth. “All of our capabilities in the physical world are downstream of manufacturing power,” he explains. “At the end of the day, our ability to have a resilient food supply chain, a strong military, good infrastructure, roads and schools – all comes from our ability to actually make these things.”

With Formic’s recent $27.4M Series A fundraise, the company is building on commercial success by expanding to new geographies and use cases. Formic is also investing in advanced AI-enabled software to continue accelerating their growth. In the long term, Saman envisions a future where American manufacturing is revitalized and globally competitive, driven by advanced automation.

“If we do our jobs well, we will be the largest workforce provider for American factories.”

To sign up for progress updates on Formic and for more information on open roles, visit https://formic.co/.

We’re thrilled to announce the close of our third fund, Blackhorn Ventures Industrial Impact Fund II, LP (IIF II). With $150M in commitments towards our new fund, our team is exceptionally well-positioned to partner with world-class founders transforming how we build, power, and move our world. Our focus is seed and Series A stage investments into capital-efficient software solutions, vertical SaaS companies, and AI applications that address the urgent need for industrial resource efficiency and decarbonization at scale.

IIF II is taking advantage of the falling cost curve of energy storage and renewable energy, historic growth in zero-emission transportation, the persistent need for supply chain resiliency, the mandate to scale energy-efficient building retrofits, and the urgent need to build a tech-enabled workforce in manufacturing, construction, and utilities. Portfolio companies are targeting the $1.7 trillion industrial resource efficiency market and leveraging the $4.5 trillion needed for the global energy transition by 2030.

Phillip O’Connor and Melissa Cheong co-lead the firm as GPs and managing partners. Only 3% of the $107B raised by venture funds in 2023 went to VC firms with women in leadership positions. With the conviction that diverse teams drive better financial performance, Blackhorn Ventures is proud to lead the way in a commitment to inclusive leadership in venture capital.

“We are at a pivotal moment where the AI supercycle and the manufacturing supercycle intersect with historic changes in our energy and transportation systems,” said Melissa Cheong. “Our fund supports founders at the forefront of industrial AI, addressing labor shortages, and delivering scalable decarbonization solutions. With six early mark-ups, we believe our thesis is timely and essential for economic competitiveness and industry durability.”

The fund has new limited partnerships with Mitsubishi Electric, Westlake Corporation, Goldbeck GmbH and Mercuria Energy, and continued commitments from Jonathan Rose, Simpson Strong-Tie, and the Grantham Foundation for the Protection of the Environment. These partnerships enhance our ability to support portfolio companies through industry insights, distribution and customer access, accelerating their path to scale.

“Strategic corporate partnerships are crucial for scaling impact,” added Phillip O’Connor. “We’ve been investing in machine learning and AI since 2017 and are privileged to bring this experience to bear on collaborations with a select group of multinationals that share our vision, and are committed to supporting groundbreaking digital infrastructure.”

Industrial Impact Fund II is actively sourcing new investments, and has already invested in some of the leading startups revolutionizing the industrial landscape through advanced AI-driven solutions, including Formic, Circuit Mind, ThinkLabs, Specifix, EcoWorks, Optera, and Electric Era. As an Impact Assets 50 fund, Blackhorn Ventures actively tracks and reports on the financial and environmental impacts of its portfolio, is aligned with Article 8 and 9 SFDR requirements, and helps define industry standards through groups like Project FRAME and Impact Capital Managers.

“Blackhorn has a unique investing approach for accelerating the transition to a net zero economy in critical industries. For select Caprock clients who have asked us to help them combat climate change, Blackhorn’s thesis and current portfolio of companies are compelling,” said Nick Flores, Managing Director at Caprock, a multi-family office with more than $11B under advisement. 

“We are pleased to partner with Blackhorn Ventures on Industrial Impact Fund II. This collaboration aligns perfectly with Mercuria’s commitment to driving the energy transition through innovative digital infrastructure and sustainable solutions,” said Boris Bystrov, Investment Managing Director at Mercuria. “By leveraging AI and advanced technologies, we can accelerate decarbonization efforts and enhance operational efficiencies across the industrial sector. We look forward to supporting the transformative impact this fund will have on the global energy landscape.”

Blackhorn Ventures is thrilled to announce our latest investment in Formic, a business set to revolutionize manufacturing with their industrial Robots-as-a-Service (RaaS) platform. Leading the $27.4 million Series A+ round alongside co-investors Mitsubishi HC Capital America, NEC, Translink Capital, Alumni Ventures, FJ Labs, Lux Capital, Initialized Capital and Lorimer Ventures, we are excited to support Formic in their mission to revolutionize manufacturing by making automation accessible to the 90% of US manufacturers not currently leveraging automation – especially to small and medium-sized manufacturers.

Led by serial entrepreneur Saman Farid, Formic is democratizing access to the latest robotic systems, offering a scalable, flexible solution that aligns with the diverse needs of manufacturers.  What the PPA did for solar, Formic is doing for industrial robots; offering Robots-as-a-Service to make automation simple, affordable, and fast – ensuring businesses of all sizes can thrive in the global marketplace. Formic handles all scoping, design, deployment, monitoring, and maintenance for a robot for one low hourly rate, saving manufacturing and industrial companies time and money from their first day of service.

Formic has deployed its fleet of robotic automation equipment in 60+ facilities, generating $20M+ in total contract value, wth a 97% renewal rate, and strong upselling of the expanding customer base. Formic delivers a 50% reduction in industry standard implementation time, delivering value faster than traditional robotics vendors.  They are OEM agnostic, and boast a 99.43%+ uptime over the last 12 months with over 100k production hours achieved this year.  Most importantly, they allow for cost-competitive robotics in areas where labor shortages are a major limiting factor for manufacturing output.

The adoption of robotics and automation on the factory floor are being accelerated by rising labor costs, growing production demands, advancements in technology, geopolitical pressures, and supply chain disruptions necessitating reshoring​​. The U.S. is currently facing a severe labor shortage, particularly in the manufacturing sector: compared to pre-pandemic levels this critical pillar on economic competitiveness has 1.9 million fewer workers. This shortage is exacerbated by an aging workforce;10,000 baby boomers retire every day, which will result in 2-2.5 million manufacturing jobs unfilled by 2030. The traditional labor market is struggling to keep up, driving the need for solutions to boost industrial productivity amidst an unprecedented boom in American manufacturing.

Introducing automation into a manufacturing production process for the first time using the traditional playbook is a daunting task. There is only 1 robotic programming engineer for every 11 manufacturing facilities in the US. Existing engineering and maintenance teams inside these facilities don’t have the skill sets to operate and maintain automation equipment after it is deployed. This leads to a continued degradation in system performance over time, resulting in abandonment of automation and a return to “the way we’ve always done it”. These failures are the hallmark of traditional automation projects and the entire reason Formic was founded. The team developed Robots-as-a-Service to eliminate financial and operational barriers and deliver a guaranteed way for US manufacturers to have continued operational success resulting in increased productivity, quality, and safety.

A Brighter Future Through Automation in Manufacturing

Formic provides fully managed automation with no upfront capital expenditure. Their service includes 24/7 monitoring, maintenance, and performance guarantees. By leasing robots to industrial customers on a short-term basis, Formic allows businesses to reduce operating expenses by 40%, double production capacity, and start making payments only after the system is operational. Formic offers flexible contracts and the ability to scale automation as needed, making it easier for manufacturers to adopt and benefit from off-the-shelf robotic technology.

Formic’s vertically integrated RaaS platform de-risks the process of scoping, deploying, maintaining, supporting, and repurposing of robots for its customers. Key components of Formic’s technology stack include:

• Ant (Edge Device): An embedded IoT product that interfaces with Formic’s robotic fleet, enabling real-time data gathering for advanced analytics and diagnostics.
• Core (Operating System): An equipment agnostic operating system accessed through a simple touch screen interface, making deployment and operation faster and easier than ever before.
• Colony (Fleet Management): A SaaS product that integrates maintenance, billing, asset management, and performance data, automating fleet management decisions with machine learning.
• Portal (Customer UI): A mobile and web-enabled application providing customers with comprehensive data on their robots, from billing to usage specifics.
• Swarm (Engineering Tools for Integrators): Augmented reality and workflow automation tools for scoping, designing, simulating, and generating blueprints for robotic deployments​​​​.

Enhancing Competitiveness and Sustainability Through Automation and Reshoring

Formic’s approach enhances manufacturing competitiveness by unlocking capacity to enable streamlined reshoring and reduction of transportation-related emissions. Domestic supply chains, estimated to emit 25% less than their global counterparts, will benefit from increased production efficiency and reduced workplace injuries. Robots are expected to create more high-quality jobs than they displace, transforming the manufacturing landscape and improving working conditions. By enabling a significant reduction in long-distance transportation by strengthening domestic production capabilities, Formic is having a meaningful impact on reducing greenhouse gas emissions.

The Formic Team: Domain Expertise Across Robotics and Fintech

Formic is led by a seasoned team of experts in robotics, finance, and automation:

• Saman Farid, Co-Founder and CEO: An experienced operator and investor, Saman previously founded an e-commerce company and Comet Labs, a venture capital firm focused on robotic automation. He also served as Head of US Investing for Baidu Ventures.
• Jack Wagler, CFO: Promoted to CFO in June 2022, Jack was previously Treasurer and VP of Finance at Formic. He has extensive experience in specialty finance, having worked at Tyr Partners and EY.
• Steve Olszewski, COO: Prior to joining Formic, Steve was General Manager at Financeit and President and CEO of Spruce Finance, where he managed residential distributed energy resources​​.
• Shawn Fitzgerald, VP of Marketing & Sales: In his previous roles as President of Thomasnet and CMO at Xometry, Shawn managed manufacturing marketplaces providing supply chain solutions for US manufacturers.

At Blackhorn Ventures, we believe in the transformative power of automation to revitalize our industrial base.  We’re proud to support Formic in their mission to revolutionize the manufacturing industry. For a limited time Formic is allowing select US manufacturers to try robotic palletizing in their facility for just $4,750 / month, shipped in 24 hours, fully installed and with 100% maintenance included – for more info click here. For more information on open roles at Formic, visit their job board here.

Blackhorn Ventures is proud to announce our latest investment in ThinkLabs, which is accelerating the energy transition with an AI-powered co-pilot for grid operators. We’re proud to co-invest in their Series Seed alongside GE Vernova, PowerHouse Ventures, Active Impact Capital, Mercuria Energy, and Amplify Ventures. Blackhorn Partner Micah Kotch will join the company’s board of directors.

Our focus at Blackhorn Ventures is on founders who are transforming how we build, power, and move our world.  As part of that focus, we’re thrilled to support ThinkLabs efforts to empower grid operators to leverage the power of AI to decarbonize the grid and make it more resilient.

Utilities around the world are struggling with a combination of growing loads, decarbonization commitments, a tidal wave of intermittent generation coming online, public pressure to limit rate increases, and workforce shortages. ThinkLabs solution has the potential to simplify grid operations, reduce outages, and shorten the interconnection queue for renewables and energy storage, which aligns with our mission, vision and values. We’re confident the support from our corporate strategic Limited Partners will help accelerate new deployments, and contribute to ThinkLabs emergence as a leader in the energy industry.

Grids Under Historic Pressures

Workforce Empowerment

The backbone of the energy transition is the electric grid, and arguably, the most critical individuals who operate our most critical infrastructure are grid operators. After more than a century of advancements, the grid is evolving to connect to a surge in data volume via a jump in renewable energy generation, data center growth driven by AI adoption, distributed energy resource expansion ( including via solar, EVs and energy storage), and new data inputs including smart meters. At the same time, utilities are staring down the ‘Silver Tsunami’; the average age in the utility industry is 50 and more than 50% of the utility workforce is set to retire over the next five years. New grid operators are in short-supply, and those that do exist are being asked to manage today’s grid with yesterday’s tools.

Shortening the Interconnection Queue

The shift from centralized to distributed generators requires accommodating unpredictable bi-directional electricity flows, while the integration of grid-connected devices, like EV charging stations and distributed solar and storage, add complexity. Delayed and inadequate investments in transmission and distribution infrastructure and grid upgrades have resulted in a total capacity of energy projects in U.S. interconnection queues that grew 40% year-over-year in 2022, with more than 1,350 GW of generation and 680 GW of storage waiting for approval to connect, according to a recent report from Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. Permitting reform, infrastructure investments, and software upgrades are required to move the needle: the typical energy project completed in 2022 spent five years in queue for interconnection approval compared to three years in 2015 and fewer than two years in 2008. Queue lengths are expected to grow as the Inflation Reduction Act spurs even greater interest in renewable energy among developers.

The Double-Edged Sword of Artificial Intelligence

Power systems are rapidly evolving due to increasing electricity demand and decarbonization efforts (Grid Strategies recently predicted an 81% jump in US load growth forecasts primarily due to demand from data centers, and the manufacturing boom). While artificial intelligence (AI) advancements are creating new power demands, they’re also part of the solution to meet this demand: AI models, doubling in computational power every five to six months since 2010, now excel in task automation. The energy sector recognizes this potential and is just beginning to use AI to boost efficiency amid the growth of smart grids and the surge in data generation. Across the global workforce, Artificial Intelligence and machine learning specialists are the profession experiencing the fastest growth in demand, creating a recruitment bottleneck. In June 2022, there were only 22 000 AI specialists globally across all industries, and 61% of large firms surveyed in the United Kingdom and United States reported lacking staff with sufficient AI experience. The energy industry will need to compete to recruit the best data scientists and programmers. ThinkLabs helps address this gap by productizing the data science and machine learning the industry needs.

A Solution Grid Operators Love

ThinkLabs is building AI native software for the energy industry; digital infrastructure that takes an AI-first perspective to improve electric grid performance. Their autonomous energy system (AES) will enable and accelerate the grid’s role as the electron and intelligence platform of the energy transition. Like autonomous driving for vehicles, autonomous energy systems provide successive levels of autonomy, from operator assistance, to ‘human in the loop’ copilots in the near term, and eventually full autonomy of grid and energy operations from the network to the edge.

At the heart of AES is an AI-augmented digital twin of the grid. This digital twin leverages the up-and-coming field of physics-informed AI, which overcomes data quality and computation constraints of traditional physics-only digital twins, as well as sparse data and “black box” effects of AI models. The result is transparent, trusted, robust, and high-performance operational analytics that are pre-trained and prepared for real-life conditions, while continuously learning and improving with field experience. ThinkLabs has a unique ability to yield actionable insights with imperfect data quality, rather than spending millions of dollars and countless hours to clean static data sets that will never be perfect enough for mathematical optimization (i.e. garbage-in-garbage-out).  The deep diligence we’ve conducted with our network of grid operators and utility customers suggests ThinkLabs is building a solution that has real market pull.

Partnering with GE Vernova

The genesis of ThinkLabs comes from within GE Vernova; the new GE spinout on a mission to electrify the planet while simultaneously working to decarbonize it. GE’s significant utility relationships and access to grid data from utilities around the world provided fertile ground for the ThinkLabs team to design highly scalable grid power flow analytics in operational real-time, capable of managing fast-changing and flexible grid dynamics. The ThinkLabs platform has been trained with 50K+ scenarios and pretrained solutions to handle various generation, load, storage, and switching combinations, rather than relying on a handful of week/day ahead worst-case planning studies.

Initially, GE Vernova will serve as a primary channel for go-to-market, with GE Digital sales teams upselling the ThinkLabs solutions to existing GE Vernova utility customers (40% of global grid operators run GE systems). Given the challenge of the traditionally slow utility sales cycle, we see this as a massive competitive advantage, and a way to get to scale quickly. With average contract sizes that could range from $1-10M annually, ThinkLabs is partenring with Tier 1 Investor-Owned Utilities that have the ability to scale and grow over time (unlike some of their competitors, which are primarily focused on smaller electrical co-ops and municipally owned-utilities). The team already has 70+ utilities it has qualified and is pursuing channel relationships with cloud providers, consultants, and systems integrators who serve the utility sector, as GE Vernova does not have an exclusive on the ThinkLabs product.

Founders with domain expertise, exits, and experience scaling product

ThinkLabs CEO and Founder Josh Wong has spent his career in energy innovation. He was the former Head of Smart Grid at electric utility Toronto Hydro, and founded and exited Opus One (which built a enterprise-grade Distributed Energy Resource Management Solutions) to GE. Josh has over 15 years experience building hardware and software for smart grids and most recently led the Grid Orchestration team at GE. Neal Vali, Head of Engineering, has 15+ years of experience leading software engineering teams at Sirius XM Connected Vehicles and Omnitracs where he built products for heavily-regulated industries including Aerospace and Automotive. George Zheng has a grid data and power modeling background — he has also led technical teams, with over 13 years of experience modeling and analyzing power systems at GE Digital and PowerTech Labs. He also has experience applying generative AI to grid modeling. George previously led the design and development of advanced engineering analytics across the GE Vernova product platform. We believe deep subject-matter expertise around industry-specific data is the most important success factor for applying Generative AI to specific industries. Collectively, the team has excellent utility/grid data experience and strong industry networks: critical for getting to scale quickly. The team is currently hiring for ML software and data engineers – interested applicants should apply at thinklabs.ai

Blackhorn Ventures is proud to announce our latest investment in Buzz Solutions, which uses  AI-powered visual data insights and predictive analytics to safeguard critical infrastructure.  Blackhorn previously invested in Buzz’s 2022 Seed Round, and we’re proud to co-invest in their Series A alongside GoPoint Ventures and MaC Venture Capital . 

The electric grid is the backbone of the energy transition. For the past two decades, demand for electricity across the United States was flat. However, this is dramatically changing. The combination of accelerating growth in electricity use by data centers mining cryptocurrency and delivering AI, plus longer-term electrification of manufacturing, electric vehicles and building heating has upended that status quo. All told, grid planners across the U.S. forecast an increase of 38 gigawatts of peak demand by 2028, according to data reported to federal regulators.  As the Washington Post recently reported, “Vast swaths of the United States are at risk of running short of power as electricity-hungry data centers and clean-technology factories proliferate around the country, leaving utilities and regulators grasping for credible plans to expand the nation’s creaking power grid.”

As both the transmission network and the electrical distribution network are increasingly strained, utilities are looking to build ‘digital twins’ to streamline asset maintenance and repair. Utilities face three large and growing problems that require immediate behavior change: 1) the growing cost of extreme storms, wildfires, unexpected blackouts and preventable failures, 2) the need to rapidly modernize the grid given a jump in renewable energy generation and distributed energy resources (including EVs and energy storage), and 3) an aging workforce and severe labor shortages as more than 50% of the utility’s workforce is set to retire over the next decade.

At the center of these three challenges sits Buzz Solutions. Their AI-powered visual data insights and predictive analytics platform is designed to provide fault detection, monitoring, and management for utility power infrastructure and renewable energy assets. Buzz Solutions’s 100,000+ image-to-image source of record acts as a foundational data asset that is core to training their best-in-class AI model. The company is quickly becoming the go-to solution for visualizing data sets to enable resilience – and real savings for utilities.

The world of grid inspections is plagued with inefficiencies

When it comes to speed, accuracy and expense, grid inspections are far behind the standards of other critical infrastructure. Electrical utilities suffer losses of $170B annually due to network failures, forced shutdowns, and natural disasters. On average, grid inspection takes six to eight weeks for an engineer to conduct manually. This work comes at a great cost to utility workers: power line repairmen rank in the top 20 most dangerous jobs in the US and account for 24.2 deaths per 100,000 workers according to the US Bureau of Labor Statistics.

Compounding this historic challenge for the energy industry, utilities have faced a record number of thefts (e.g., copper and other raw materials), break-ins and vandalism at substations (including several high-profile incidents resulting in blackouts). These events have spurred calls for new regulatory mandates for greater monitoring and autonomous operations, given that many substations are in highly remote areas. The utility industry is urgently looking for new solutions to help avoid these costly and high-risk incidents and their associated negative publicity and potential for lawsuits.

Buzz Solutions offers an AI platform to efficiently inspect, monitor and manage power infrastructure 

Buzz Solutions provides a multi-product visual data digitization and analytics platform to address utilities’ inspection and monitoring analytics needs via two solutions: PowerAI and PowerGUARD.  Unlike other solutions on the market, Buzz does not need to bear the expense of collecting raw data.  Instead, they partner with drone, helicopter, and ground-based providers and existing utility sub-contractors.

PowerAI is a cloud-based AI software analyzing visual transmission and distribution data.  It does this faster, cheaper, more accurately, and safer than current manual processes. With its human-in-the-loop algorithm, PowerAI generates materially higher accuracy, at 60% of the cost, and 5X faster than manual processes, saving Buzz’s customers~$5M daily in reduced outage risk (assuming analysis of roughly 2M images per year). PowerAI ingests aerial visual data collected via third-party drone partners or a utilities in-house drone inspection team. It processes these images through their data management and AI fueled smart algorithms. It stores the analytics and reporting on a utility’s IT/OT systems to address cybersecurity considerations; and then integrates the insights into the utility’s GIS or work order systems via APIs to ensure the necessary actions tie into workflow and maintenance prioritization systems. In 2024, Buzz plans to expand PowerAI functionality to include smart analytics of solar and hydro assets. For PowerAI, Buzz’s extensive field inspection data volume source acts as a foundational data asset that is core to their competitive advantage.

In 2023, Buzz launched its second platform solution, PowerGUARD, as an edge AI monitoring platform providing 24/7 visual monitoring for utility substations. PowerGUARD analyzes visual data and thermal imagery via fixed on-site cameras; and provides intrusion, worker safety, and equipment condition monitoring as well as fire, smoke and arcing detection with their AI-powered alerting algorithm. It then delivers these alerts to the relevant utility teams, such as the substation operators or security teams. In 2024, Buzz plans to expand PowerGUARD’s product coverage to include monitoring and analytics of wind infrastructure assets.

It’s there but we can make it more explicit about how it has influenced our conviction. The primary piece is adding on the Substation product and evolving to a full platform solution that captures, digitizes, analyzes and builds actions into the utility workflow system for all visual data assets. The other piece is the significant uptick in utility customer “readiness to act”. Thanks for that input.

The transmission inspection market is massive and becoming more connected 

Globally, the transmission inspection market accounts for over $40B. The market is expected to double over the next decade as voluntary and mandated inspections increase. New transmission builds, for example, now require an initial and post-construction inspection. As inspections transition from manual processes to more autonomous drone and robotic data collection, it is expected that utilities will capture 10x more images for each monitored structure. With more data comes the need for better prioritization and actionable insights – exactly where Buzz is positioned to win.  Additionally, the growth of renewable energy assets creates a large and growing market opportunity for solar, wind, and hydro inspection analysis, which PowerAI could service with minimal product updates.

Given the intermittent and unpredictable load profiles of EVs and DERs, implications for the  utility distribution network are still unknown. However, the aging grid is increasingly stressed and strained. The more utilities monitor grid equipment and assets, the better they understand their condition. With this understanding, grid operators will be able to better estimate  load patterns, infrastructure capacity, and speed the pace of electrification and decarbonization. We believe the combined offering of PowerAI and PowerGUARD position Buzz to be the 0nly utility tuned platform that will increasingly capture, digitize, provide superior analytics, and seamlessly build actions into the utility workflows  across all visual data assets. We see this broader visual data analytics platform accelerating customer interest, early adoption and full enterprise deployment in the coming years.

Founders with a customer obsession

Buzz was co-founded by CEO Kaitlyn Albertoli and CTO Vikhyat Chaudhry in 2017. The pair met at Stanford University and started Buzz as part of their coursework. Kaitlyn graduated from Stanford and has a background in finance and sustainability. She leads go to market for the company, and has spent the past seven years working with utility customers and channel partners. While earning his MS in Civil and Environmental Engineering, Vik specialized in energy engineering and AI/ML for smart grid technologies, working as a research assistant focused on ML and computer vision for drone sensing of wind farms. He spent three years as a data scientist at Cisco Systems, and worked as an embedded systems engineer focused on firmware design and Machine Learning based intent prediction algorithms. Since we invested at the seed stage, the team has been laser focused on serving customers like NYPA, Southern California Edison and others monitor their critical infrastructure, achieving best in class performance. They’re currently hiring a Marketing Manager, Sales Specialist and Solutions Engineer to join the team and their mission of safeguarding the world’s energy infrastructure. For more information on open roles at Buzz Solutions, visit their job board here.

Blackhorn Ventures is excited to share our latest market insights white paper on “Deployment Capital for Decarbonization.”

With over $400 billion in available funding, the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law and the Inflation Reduction Act are landmark policies helping to accelerate the clean energy transition in America. But how can startup companies, especially software-oriented businesses, access these funds and navigate the federal procurement process?

This paper explores three ways startup companies can access funding, some of the top energy and transportation funding opportunities we’re tracking, how startups with limited time and resources can navigate the process, and lessons learned from representative startup companies navigating the process.

View the report below or download it by clicking on this link or on the image above.

(Make sure to click the fullscreen button on the viewer below to have the best experience. It is in the tool panel on the top of the viewer and just to the right of the zoom slider; it looks like a square made of just the corners.)

Video                                                                  Inv. announcement

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Chinmay Malaviya (left) and Charlie Depman (right) met in 2020 while working at two first-generation micro-mobility companies (Bird & Lime). Identifying a need within the industry for longer rider-vehicle relationships and greater vehicle optionality, Chinmay and Charlie founded Ridepanda, a one-stop shop for micro-mobility benefits that empowers employers to offer subsidized micro-mobility solutions to employees.

We sat down with Chinmay and Charlie to discuss the Ridepanda’s origin story, how the company is making micro-mobility more accessible and affordable, and the industry’s future from a regulatory and technological perspective (video  here). For more information on open roles at Ridepanda, visit their job board here. For more on Blackhorn’s investment in Ridepanda, see our investment announcement here  

Tell us about your entrepreneurial path, and the creation of Ridepanda.

(Chinmay) There have been many Panda adventures for me – my first internship was actually at the World Wildlife Fund, which Charlie reminds me was my first “Panda” experience.

In 2012, I joined the early founding team of Foodpanda, a company comparable to DoorDash operating in Southeast Asia. Foodpanda was where I truly learned and fell in love with the meaning of the word “entrepreneur.” To start, entrepreneurship means close proximity to impact. As an entrepreneur, you are not siloed; rather, you stand next to a company and industry’s challenges and opportunities, and are provided the space to attack both in a meaningful, intentional manner. Being an entrepreneur is also synonymous with wearing multiple hats. It was so intellectually stimulating to switch between analyzing an operational issue to a sales issue in the matter of a day – that freedom to continuously address core problems was something I appreciated most about my experience at Foodpanda. Foodpanda was one of the first Internet 1.0 companies offering online payments. While there were varying degrees of hesitation across the locations we served due to fear of fraud and other perceived operational challenges – from Singapore to Thailand to Malaysia – it was incredible to see how we were able to convert the region from cash payments to online payments. Around 2013, we transitioned from a desktop application to a mobile application; as the technology was evolving, I had an intimate viewpoint of the transition.

Most recently, I worked at Lime. Lime was an incredible experience that introduced me to (A) micro-mobility and the challenges surrounding the transportation of people and goods, and (B) the “Silicon Valley approach” to building businesses. On the latter point, my time at Lime illuminated how highly valued product, tech, and data is in Silicon Valley. On the former point, Lime bolstered me with credibility in the micro-mobility space, confidence in the US ecosystem, and the self-awareness that I’m better at building things from zero; I wanted to wear the entrepreneurial hat while working on a meaningful project with individuals I can learn from – individuals like Charlie.

(Charlie) My journey began in China, where I lived for 2.5 years cumulatively. Living in China offered me two major insights. First, I gained insight into the extent of environmental degradation occurring not just in China, but all over the world, and its impact on peoples’ health and happiness; that realization ultimately led me to stop teaching English and start a career at environmental nonprofits. The second major insight I had was around transportation. In large cities such as Shanghai, Beijing, Taipei, or Chongqing, cars are simply not the answer; instead, I saw that micro-mobility devices were convenient options that allow individuals to move in a low impact manner and cities to become more liveable. I can’t recall the number of times I would travel back to San Francisco or New York City, see these enormous SUVs with one person in them, and think to myself: “This cannot be the future if we want to have sustainable cities.”

In my most recent stint in China, I was working at NYU Shanghai as a teacher with dreams of being a sci-fi writer. There, I had an epiphany as I questioned how I could build things beyond dreaming and writing about them. The answer: coding. I audited a coding course at NYU Shanghai, fell in love with programming, and moved to San Francisco to further educate myself. Along the way, I discovered the company Scoot, who were the first to offer shared micro-mobility via smartphones.

I joined Scoot as one of their first engineers and stayed there for four years. During my time there, Scoot became a multimodal platform – offering e-bikes, scooters, vespa-style sit-down scooters – and I had the opportunity to go back to China and help work on several micro-mobility devices (such as Scoot’s first electric bike). When Scoot was acquired by Bird, this multimodal trend continued and I helped build technology to support multiple vehicle types on Bird’s platform. Bird started providing retail offerings as well. At the beginning of 2020, I met Chinmay, who had a similar experience at Lime (in terms of micro-mobility companies offering multimodal vehicle options and programs with longer-term vehicle relationships), and the Ridepanda platform was born soon thereafter.

What problems are you trying to solve within the transportation sector?

(Chinmay) Given our respective tenures at Bird and Lime, Charlie and I are both very familiar with the transportation sector. During our time at these companies, one fact became increasingly clear. Ultimately, climate change is the biggest challenge facing humanity today; and in the United States, transportation is the #1 cause of emissions. If you break that down, passenger cars make up more than half of those trips. If you double click again, in the large majority of cities, 60% to 70% of passenger car trips are between 0 and 5 miles.

Companies in the space such as Bird and Lime tackled many of these issues and encouraged people to embrace micro-mobility, but we saw an opportunity to further accelerate the transition. E-bikes, scooters, and other form factors were becoming more familiar to commuters; technological evolution was occurring at a rapid pace in the space; and people were, and still are, hungry for alternatives that prioritize their health and wellness while promoting sustainability.

The first generation of micro-mobility companies, such as Lime and Bird, seem to have negative investor sentiment because of challenging unit economics. How do you differentiate yourself in a crowded micro-mobility space?

(Charlie) Relative to other scooter sharing companies, we differentiate ourselves in three categories. First, convenience. When you have a Ridepanda subscription, your vehicle is yours; whether you need to go to work, grocery shop, or visit a friend across town, your vehicle is always there for you. That differs from sharing companies, where oftentimes a user must hunt for a vehicle that is nearby, in-service, and charged. Second, reliability. We take good care of our vehicles and our customers take good care of our vehicles. We offer servicing for all of our vehicles through the lifespan of the lease; we also partner with high-quality vehicle manufacturers to provide high-quality vehicles in the first place. And beyond those factors, Ridepanda customers care about the condition of their vehicle because they are the next user. Third, choice. Most sharing companies have a standard model that, while it has had iterations, is built like a tank – the vehicle is built to withstand the various abuses it may run into on the streets. People have differing use cases for their micro-mobility vehicles and come in many shapes and sizes, which a standard model cannot account for. Ridepanda’s offerings can be tailored to a variety of use cases and body types, whether it involves commuting up hills or going long distances on rough terrain.

(Chinmay) There is more scrutiny around micro-mobility. However, that industry-wide scrutiny has pushed us to be better. Lime and other micro-mobility companies have created amazing demand and executed millions of trips, but they have not been able to see the same success when it comes to unit economics and profitability. At Ridepanda, since day one we have prioritized building a healthy and sustainable business while keeping long-term defensibility in mind.

Ridepanda bills itself as a “micro-mobility benefits platform for everyone.” What was the product development process for Ridepanda? How would you characterize the Ridepanda customer experience?

(Charlie) We have been listening to our customers from the beginning. Ridepanda’s first product iteration was our retail platform. At our previous companies, we found that people sought more ownership (in terms of a longer term relationship with their vehicle) and more choice. In the next iteration, we improved by thinking more locally, opening our local service centers called PandaHubs to provide ongoing support. We also saw an opportunity in leasing and subscription to foster a tighter relationship with our customers, which again allowed us to provide that high-touch servicing. With each iteration, we are trying to more deeply integrate these vehicles into our customers’ lives.

Another factor guiding our product roadmap was the issue of accessibility. Many micro-mobility vehicles can cost thousands of dollars. We saw the Ridepanda solution as an opportunity to reduce the cost of micro-mobility through subscriptions, making the price more palatable on a month-to-month basis. There was also an opportunity to make micro-mobility even more accessible with the help of employers, who sought to subsidize micro-mobility to reduce single occupancy car trips, number of parking lots and commuter shuttles used daily, as well as their carbon impact.

Ridepanda pivoted in terms of product focus in early 2022. What advice would you give to founders considering pivoting some aspect of their business? What should be taken into account when making the decision and what should founders keep in mind when executing the transition?

(Chinmay) In terms of what has worked for us, we’ve found it critical to choose a meaningful mission – to focus on something you are passionate about and have expertise in. For Charlie and I, we wanted to accelerate the transition from cars to micro-mobility.

How we have chosen to accomplish that mission, however, has evolved over the lifespan of the company. What pivoting and change comes down to is maintaining a sense of humility and honesty around what is and isn’t working; it comes down to being data driven and selecting clear, relevant KPIs; it comes down to being open to questioning things that may be working today, but may not be the best tomorrow; it comes down to embracing critique. It is a painful process because you put so much time and effort into product development. However, as a leader, you must have the capacity to acknowledge that things may not be at their best, and you have to progress with the mission as your north star.

For early-stage founders, the key pursuit is product-market fit – finding a solution with predictable sources of revenue, a strong path for growth, and an ability to make a strong moat. At the end of the day, we are happy to embrace that our baby is ugly in some aspects, and our goal is to make it better. It all comes down to having a growth mindset.

What do you view as the ultimate value of Ridepanda and to whom?

(Charlie) We see our major value delivered to three main parties. Those are our employers, their employees, and the planet.

On the employer side, we are helping them to reduce their carbon footprint and their scope 3 emissions. We are helping companies to accelerate their return to office, as well as reduce overhead cost (in terms of the parking lot and commuter shuttles). We help promote employee health and wellness – these devices allow people to get exercise before and after work, which studies show benefit employee productivity and retention. For the employees, we give them the opportunity to leave their car at home, commute flexibly on their schedule, and even have some community with other micromobility commuters at work. These devices are also fun – people love them for recreation outside of commuting.

For the planet, we are helping shift behavior for thousands of people – our full-service model with choices for everyone makes it easier for people to choose eco-friendly micromobility devices over polluting cars not only for their commutes but any other short to medium trips around town. Reducing our carbon footprint has never been so important (especially considering all the destructive climate-related events this summer) and we want to make it as frictionless as possible.

In addition, we are giving vehicle vendors – such as Giant and Specialized – a platform to introduce their product to a whole new segment of the market. A lot of our customers are first-time riders or individuals who haven’t been on a bike since they were kids.

Can you speak more about Ridepanda’s adjacent market opportunities? How do you envision the future for Ridepanda?

(Chinmay) In terms of future initiatives for employers, we are working closer with employers to amplify the benefits of partnering with Ridepanda – specifically, amplifying the benefits of increased sustainability, accelerated return to office, as well as the agency provided to employees, and the health and wellness increase of riding). We are building tools around those benefits, from measuring CO2 and Scope 3 emissions reductions to reducing integration frictions due to reimbursement in payroll. We are really doubling down with employers on why they are working with us.

We will continue working with third-party small and medium-sized bike shops; we hope to leverage these shops as we provide vehicle servicing, vehicle fulfillment, and test rides. We are also thinking about how we can help people outside of the employee network through D2C subscriptions or by leasing previously used vehicles.

Finally, employee education is an integral part of our vision for Ridepanda. Our goal is not to simply sign a lot of companies and employees; the goal is to change long-term transportation behavior. There is a lot we will have to do around education, but our ultimate vision is to create a network effect, where greater usage of micro-mobility will increase government infrastructure for micro-mobility, which in turn will increase micro-mobility usage.

There is a lot of legislation both supporting and limiting the micro-mobility industry, from the Bicycle Commuter Act to Paris’ ban of rental e-scooters. What do you see as the future of micro-mobility in terms of legislation? Which cities are getting it right? What steps should governments take to aid the growth of the industry?

(Chinmay) Government has a key role to play in the journey to popularize this novel, innovative transportation mode. I remember when Charlie and I were ideating Ridepanda, San Francisco had recently banned cars on Market Street on certain days of the week. That made it obvious to us that governments were starting to take micro-mobility more seriously; in many counties and cities, conversations are being held about micro-mobility and infrastructure is being built. One tangible example is the county of San Mateo, who is one of our clients. Not only is the county discussing micro-mobility, they are actively subsidizing it.

That being said, change is always scary. New York recently had issues with e-bike battery fires, which opened some critiques around the practicality of the industry. We see it all as growing pains – it is inevitable that, as industries grow and change, there will be questions raised around methodology. There are many low quality products on the market and governments are trying to reduce that through regulation – micro-mobility manufacturing does not have the thorough processing that car manufacturing does, which means that the margin of error is higher and the repairability score is lower. We want these vehicles to be long lasting and for that to occur, it is vital that there are regulations around quality.

Do you see micro-mobility moving in the same direction as other forms of transportation (ie. automation technology) or in another, unique direction?

(Charlie) We are continuing to see improvements in the materials and battery chemistry of the physical devices, which enables lighter, longer-lasting, safer, and ultimately cheaper vehicles. We’ve seen the price of batteries decrease by nearly 90% in the last ten years, and that price trend will surely continue.

We will continue to see vehicles like bikes and scooters become more modular, especially to promote repairability and customization. In the industry, we are trying to solve two major issues: safety and security. On the latter point, it is significantly easier to steal one of these vehicles than a car – potential growth on that front is huge. In terms of safety, there are obviously factors external to the vehicle such as infrastructure that will aid in progress; in terms of the vehicle, more technology is being developed to find safer routes on existing infrastructure. For example, Apple recently announced AppleVision. Though it is not fully released yet, I can imagine a future with a Ridepanda mobile application that provides heads-up turn-by-turn directions, accident alerts, and other safety recommendations.

You have a lot of female first-time riders. How should we be thinking about the equity and accessibility opportunities enabled by Ridepanda?

Through financial engineering, we are making micro-mobility cheaper for people who work at large companies or government agencies. We are also making riding more approachable through our brand. Our logo was designed to embody approachability: we are experts in the field, and have the knowledge that will allow you to feel comfortable and safe on your vehicle.

We offer a high-touch experience from beginning to end. When you enter a PandaHub, it’s designed to feel welcoming. There are countless people who have felt intimidated or out of place at traditional bike shops; our goal is to make people – women, first-time riders, inexperienced riders – feel accepted. We provide onboarding at our PandaHubs including test rides. We will show you all the bells and whistles of your bike; we will ensure you feel comfortable riding your bike; we will provide you with a helmet, a lock, and a pump to ensure the rest of your relationship with the vehicle is enjoyable.

Whether it’s the PandaHub’s design or the people we hire, we promote friendliness and provide services for people across the riding experience spectrum. We want the Ridepanda experience to be accessible to people of all walks of life, allowing riders to determine which vehicle fits their body, experience level, and lifestyle.

If you could have dinner with any historical figure, who would that be?

(Chinmay) I would have dinner with Mahatma Gandhi, given that I grew up in India. When I think about Gandhi, I think about an individual who was able to start a worldwide movement – before the age of social media and TikTok, he was able to create community and further the fight for dignity and freedom using noble values. His life was a lesson in sustained progress; the success of Gandhi’s movement did not happen overnight. I would love to learn what was driving him, the anxieties and struggles he faced, and the mechanisms that allowed him to persevere through the challenges. I would also love to hear his take on today’s pressing social issues, especially climate change – what would Gandhi do to create a global community and fight for a better future?

(Charlie) The Buddha. I’d love to get the Buddha’s advice on our world today, in terms of how we are treating the planet and how we are treating ourselves. I admire how his teachings and Buddhism have spread throughout the world in a gentle way, and have helped countless people gain healthy awareness and perspective. I like how the Buddha’s teachings encourage introspection and insight – which for me is important as we examine the way we live and care for the people and planet around us.