UK’s QiO Technologies bags €9.3M to help businesses reduce GHG emissions, energy costs

UK-based QiO Technologies, an AI sustainability tech startup, announced that it has raised $10M (approximately €9.33M) in a Series B round of funding from WAVE Equity Partners, an impact investment firm based in Boston, US.

The UK-based startup supports asset-heavy and energy-intensive businesses to deliver reductions in greenhouse gas emissions (GHG) and energy costs.

QiO Technologies: Everything you need to know

According to QiO, energy-intensive sectors are responsible for 24.2 per cent of annual worldwide GHG emissions. These sectors require support if they are to reduce GHG emissions from growing by 2025, and achieve total reductions of 25 per cent by 2030.

This is where QiO Technologies steps in. The startup has developed Foresight Sustainability Suite to address this challenge. The Suite claims to produce savings of up to 20 per cent on energy and maintenance costs.

The Suite gathers data from industrial assets such as cooling systems, data centre servers, compressors, kilns, furnaces, and boilers. With the use of AI, it finds and executes real-time actions that maximise resource and energy efficiency. 

This assists clients in making quick cuts to GHG emissions, energy consumption, manufacturing costs, and waste.

QiO’s Suite can be implemented in industries such as automotive, steel, glass, cement, oil & gas, data centres, and telecommunications.

Additionally, QiO believes its products might provide up to 10 per cent of the overall GHG reduction needed to achieve the 2030 Paris Agreement goal of keeping global temperature rises to 1.5°C – 2°C.

Foresight Sustainability Suite also automates real-time ESG reporting, enabling every client to measure and report Scope 1 and Scope 2 emissions. This is important since businesses are under pressure to comply with international sustainability reporting criteria.

QiO’s newest product

Foresight Optima DC+, a new product, was created in collaboration with Intel to address the requirements of energy-intensive data centres, which account for 2 per cent of global greenhouse gas emissions and 3 per cent of global power consumption.

The product analyses energy use and makes real-time modifications to individual servers, resulting in energy savings and carbon reductions of 20 – 30 per cent in data centres globally. After raising the funds, growing QiO’s clientele in this area will be a top priority.

Capital utilisation

QiO says it will use the funds to expand its operations in the US and Europe, enhance the capabilities of its Foresight Sustainability Suite, and accelerate client acquisition in sectors which confront the biggest challenges in reaching net zero GHG emissions.

Rick Haythornthwaite, co-founder and Chairman of QiO, says, “Energy-intensive industries and data centres have a crucial role to play in achieving a low-carbon economy. Our mission is for QiO to be the partner of choice for businesses that want to take decisive action today to accelerate their progress to net zero.”

“With our proven technology, demonstrable track record of delivering energy and GHG emissions savings and this Series B funding, QiO is well-placed to support energy-intensive businesses as they come under greater scrutiny from customers, investors, regulators and governments to deliver on net zero targets,” concludes Haythornthwaite.

The investor!

WAVE Equity Partners is a private equity firm that works with businesses to speed up the development of their market-validated solutions aimed at addressing some of the biggest problems in the clean energy, water, waste, food, and clean air sectors. 

The firm focuses on ground-breaking developments in sustainability and industrial technology.

Mark Robinson, co-founder and Managing Partner of WAVE Equity Partners, says, “QiO has built the market-leading innovative Foresight Sustainability Suite that uses the power of AI to solve environmental challenges on a global scale. We are excited to partner with QiO to support their ambition to contribute substantially to overcoming the challenges of climate change.”