VentureBeat Mar 31, 10:00 AM
Nvidia-backed ThinkLabs AI raises $28 million to tackle a growing power grid crunch ThinkLabs AI, a startup building artificial intelligence models that simulate the behavior of the electric grid, announced today that it has closed a $28 million Series A financing round led by Energy Impact Partners (EIP), one of the largest energy transition investment firms in the world. Nvidia’s venture capital arm NVentures and Edison International, the parent company of Southern California Edison, also participated in the round.
The funding marks a significant escalation in the race to apply AI not just to software and content generation, but to the physical infrastructure that powers modern life. While most AI investment headlines have centered on large language models and generative tools, ThinkLabs is pursuing a different and arguably more consequential application: using physics-informed AI to model the behavior of electrical grids in real time, compressing engineering studies that once took weeks or months into minutes.
"We are dead focused on the grid," ThinkLabs CEO Josh Wong told VentureBeat in an exclusive interview ahead of the announcement. "We do AI models to model the grid, specifically transmission and distribution power flow related modeling. We can calculate things like interconnection of large loads — like data centers or electric vehicle charging — and understand the impact they have on the grid."
The round drew participation from a deep bench of returning investors, including GE Vernova, Powerhouse Ventures, Active Impact Investments, Blackhorn Ventures, and Amplify Capital, along with an unnamed large North American investor-owned utility. The company initially set out to raise less than $28 million, according to Wong, but strong demand from strategic partners pushed the round higher.
"This was way oversubscribed," Wong said. "We attracted the right ecosystem partners and the right capital partners to grow with, and that's how we ended up at $28 million."
Why surging electricity demand is breaking the grid's legacy planning tools
The timing of the raise is no coincidence. U.S. electricity demand is projected to grow 25% by 2030, according to consultancy ICF International, driven largely by AI data centers, electrified transportation, and the broader push toward building and vehicle electrification. That surge is crashing into a grid that was engineered decades ago for a fundamentally different set of demands — and utilities are scrambling to keep up.
The core problem is one of computational capacity. When a utility needs to understand what will happen to its grid if a large data center connects to a particular substation, or if a cluster of EV chargers goes live in a residential neighborhood, engineers must run power flow simulations — complex calculations that model how electricity moves through the network. Those studies have traditionally relied on legacy software tools from companies like Siemens, GE, and Schneider Electric, and they can take weeks or months to complete for a single scenario.
ThinkLabs' approach repl