Sensat, a platform that helps physical infrastructure companies map and visualize all of their data, has raised $20.5 million in a Series B funding round.
Founded in 2015, and headquartered in London, Sensat is one of a number of so-called “digital twin” software companies serving the construction, mining, energy, and similar industries with tools to replicate their physical footprint in the digital realm. It’s all about turning the built world into a format that machines can analyze to generate real-time insights into everything that’s happening on Earth.
The digital twins are built using data obtained from physical sensors tied to assets, wearables, satellites, lidar, and drones, among other publicly available data sets such as traffic.
Sensat’s digital twin technology in action
For example, the UK water supply company United Utilities recently started a pilot project with Sensat to automate the water leak detection process, linking thermal data captured by drones with high-resolution photogrammetry to build an algorithm that predicts where leaks will occur.
Sensat Thermal Imaging for Leak Detection
Ultimately, it is about better helping companies plan and manage major infrastructure projects, assess risks, forecast outcomes, and improve efficiency before construction begins.
While digital twinning is not a new concept, it has emerged as a major attraction for investors around the world, with the likes of Disperse, PassiveLogic, and SiteAware raising around $15 million each in the region in recent months. Elsewhere, cloud giant Amazon AWS last year launched IoT TwinMaker, a service that helps companies easily create digital twins for real-world systems.
It’s worth noting that it’s all irony with the metaverse movement burgeoning as well, which at its core is all about moving the physical world into a virtual environment. But with Sensat and its ilk, they’re working, at least, on commercial applications that Meta can only dream of at the moment.
Infrastructure as a Service
Before now, Sensat has raised about $15 million in funding, including a $10 million Aeries A round from 2019 led by Chinese tech giant Tencent. The company’s latest $20.5 million funding round was led by National Grid Partners (NGP), the investment arm of the UK’s multinational national energy giant – a strategic investment if any.
In fact, Sensat said it plans to use the new infusion of cash to specifically double down on infrastructure projects that include power, telecommunications and railways. But National Grid’s presence and experience in the US market will also be vital to Sensat as it looks to expand its reach across the Atlantic.
Sensat co-founder and CEO James Dean said that since its commercial launch in the summer of 2021, it has deployed more than $150 billion in infrastructure construction.
“Civil infrastructure is an inherently physical industry that lacks the automation and transparency that has transformed industries online,” Dean said in a statement to TechCrunch. Civil infrastructure accounts for approximately 8% of global GDP and the backbone of every global economy, and plays a critical role in societal development and our daily lives. This gigantic industry is one of the oldest human industries and will continue to exist as long as we exist. But currently, it is undergoing seismic structural changes that reveal dwindling latent opportunities like those seen over the past two decades.”
Originally published at San Jose News Bulletin
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