CLEAN URBAN ENERGY SECURES $7M SERIES A FROM BATTERY VENTURES AND RHO VENTURES
CHICAGO -- July 7, 2011 -- Clean Urban Energy (CUE), an energy storage and smart grid performance optimization technology provider, today announced that it has secured $7 million in Series A financing. The investment was co-led by Battery Ventures and Rho Ventures, and will be applied to rapid product development and a multi-city expansion within the United States.
CUE is headquartered in Chicago and plans to use this new capital to embark on a road show fueling strategic development in four new major U.S. cities, including: New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Houston. CUE’s software as a service (SaaS) platform is an automated, scalable, energy-optimization system that exploits the thermal mass of commercial office buildings to make buildings more energy efficient. By aggregating and optimizing the thermal storage properties of multiple buildings, CUE unlocks valuable transmission and distribution capacity for utilities and grid operators in the most constrained environment: the urban city.
“Smart building technologies are quickly becoming a significant new category of investment in cleantech, where energy efficiency meets mainstream IT,” said Jason Matlof, Battery Ventures Partner. “CUE’s a perfect example of this trend. Their solution uniquely combines proven building physics, a robust hosted software analytics platform, and a SaaS business model to deliver dramatic energy spending savings to commercial office buildings. Rich Earley is a proven entrepreneur and leader and we’re excited to partner with him to help grow CUE into a category leading, sustainable business.”
CUE essentially turns a “building into a battery”™ capable of energy storage on a multi-MW scale. CUE technology helps large commercial office buildings reduce building HVAC energy use and expenses by 15 – 30 percent, improve electric generation efficiency and environmental performance, and at a macro level introduces demand elasticity into electric grid markets.
“This funding is an important and critical milestone for our business, and will enable us to accelerate product engineering and customer acquisition during this next phase of rapid growth,” said Rich Earley, CUE CEO. “The market knowledge and relationships that our new investors bring to the table will help us rapidly penetrate the property management and owner community to become a leading technology provider in the market.”
With this round, Jason Matlof from Battery Ventures and Joshua Ruch from Rho Ventures will assume seats on CUE’s board of directors.
“CUE represents a major milestone in the convergence of the cleantech and IT industries,” said Joshua Ruch, Rho Ventures managing partner. “With a compelling SaaS-based solution, CUE is delivering a new standard of electricity savings that uses a building’s thermal mass and delivers significant megawatt storage capacity to grid operators. We believe CUE is well positioned to take advantage of a significant market opportunity in building energy efficiency.”
News of the funding has received national coverage. Read more in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Chicago Tribune, TechCrunch, Venture Beat, GigaOM, CNET Greentech Blog, San Jose Buisiness Journal, VatorNews, and WIREDvc.