On Wednesday, Prisma Photonics, a Tel Aviv-based company that provides security monitoring for large-scale infrastructure assets, announced that it has received $20 million in a Series B venture capital round. The funding round was led by New York-based global private equity and venture capital firm Insight Partners, with participation from Schneider Electric‘s venture capital arm SE Ventures, and E.ON‘s corporate venture capital platform Future Energy Ventures. Alongside prior investments from i3 Equity Partners and Chione Switzerland, the new capital brings Prisma Photonics to more than $30 million in private capital raised to date.
The company said it plans to use the funds to accelerate its growth and to support new customers and projects.
Prisma Photonics’ fiber sensing solutions serve multiple markets that share a common need to monitor and manage large-scale infrastructures, such as power transmission grids, oil and gas transmission pipelines, long-spanning railways, highways, subsea cables and pipes. Its technology aims to prevent spills, wildfires, and other environmental hazards, monitoring these risks in real-time, using pre-existing optical fibers across significant distances (up to thousands of kilometers), without installing any sensors on the infrastructure itself. The company’s list of clients includes the New York Power Authority, Israeli Natural Gas Lines, Israel Electric Corporation and other tier-1 utility operators.
“With the demand for energy on the rise, utility operators find it harder to keep their assets operating smoothly and safely. It is a challenge to monitor and maintain these long infrastructures,” Prisma Photonics CEO Dr. Eran Inbar said. “Our Machine Learning based solutions are unique as we address this huge scale challenge with ease and accuracy. The investment is a vote of confidence from Insight Partners and a first of its kind in a new domain of critical infrastructure management.”
“Prisma Photonics is solving a critical challenge for utility operators, by allowing them to monitor the safety and ongoing operations of their infrastructures,” said Ganesh Bell, Managing Director at Insight Partners, who will join the company’s Board in connection with the investment. “Prisma Photonics’ breakthrough technology is a great example of combining deep engineering and AI to solve real world problems of significant consequence. Insight is excited to partner with Eran and team on this exciting next step in the company’s growth journey.”
“This investment comes in the footsteps of a commercial agreement we signed with Prisma Photonics last year,” said Barbara Frei, EVP Industrial Automation at Schneider Electric. “We see the potential and believe that with these solutions our customers can drive efficiency and sustainability through energy and resource loss avoidance.”
“Prisma Photonics’ AI driven Hyper-Scan Fiber-Sensing solution helps to improve grid safety, security and reliability of critical large-scale infrastructures,” said Ohad Mamann, Investment Principal at Future Energy Ventures. “We are pleased to partner with the team to further accelerate E.ON’s digital grid vision.”
