The electric grid spans millions of kilometers across forests, mountains, and urban landscapes. Maintaining it is key to preventing damage from everyday weather conditions or natural wear and tear. Traditionally, grid inspection is done by having crews patrolling power lines – a time-consuming process that is both hazardous and impractical at scale. As climate change accelerates the risks of fires, storms, and equipment failures, entrepreneurs look for ways to simplify inspection.
Utilities are turning to cutting-edge technologies that leverage robotics, AI, and satellite imagery to deliver faster, smarter, and safer grid inspection. This article spotlights five pioneering grid startups, each offering unique solutions to improving safety, maintenance, and ensuring uninterrupted power delivery.
Buzz Solutions (USA)
Buzz Solutions (USA) was born out of Stanford Launchpad, where co-founders Vikhyat Chaudhry and Kaitlyn Albertoli came together to tackle the utility industry’s manual, slow, and reactive approach to grid inspection. Buzz leverages AI-powered software to analyze visual data from drones and helicopters to detect fire hazards, aging components, and maintenance issues. Anomalities are flagged with GPS coordinates and fed into the utility’s maintenance systems for timely action. As climate risks intensify and infrastructure ages, Buzz helps utilities prioritize repairs, prevent blackouts, and reduce wildfire threats. The company closed a $5 million growth round in March 2024,bringing its total funding to $10.7 million.
Delphire Inc (USA)
When electrical fires swept through his neighborhood during his PhD studies at Caltech, Gilberto DeSalvo witnessed firsthand the devastation that faulty grid infrastructure can cause. Inspired to prevent similar disasters, he founded Delphire in 2020 to tackle the growing wildfire risk posed by downed or failing power lines, an issue made worse as climate change brings hotter, drier conditions and more intense weather.
Grid failures are a growing wildfire risk, especially as climate change brings drier conditions brought by intense heat and lower humidity. Once mostly concentrated in California, grid-sparked wildfires are emerging across many regions in the USA as aging infrastructure struggles under extreme weather.
Delphire’s Sentinel FD3 system uses AI‑powered computer vision, thermal imaging, and smoke sensors to continuously monitor power lines detecting fires within seconds. It also streams GPS‑tagged alerts and images to authorities. This automated, cost‑effective approach enables emergency response teams to tackle fire risk and minimize the threat of a large-scale wildfire incident. In August 2024, the U.S. Department of Energy awarded Delphire a $650 000 grant to advance its wildfire detection technology.
Nomadic Drone (Germany)
Nomadic Drone sprang to life in 2023 when UC Berkeley students Andreas Moldskred and Lauritz Weil realized that traditional grid inspections could not keep pace with growing infrastructure demands. They created an autonomous drone that flies along power lines, uses AI to spot damage, and automatically ties every image to its exact asset location for swift, human‑verified action.
The game‑changer lies in the drone’s self‑recharging feature: they land on power lines and recharge by harnessing the magnetic field generated by the power lines. This breakthrough removes range limitations, cuts costly support infrastructure, and unlocks continuous, wide-scale monitoring. This continuous, data‑driven approach empowers utilities to prioritize maintenance, prevent failures, and enhance overall grid resilience. This has captured investor attention and a $1.6 million in pre‑seed funding led by Outlander VC and Asia2G Capital.
ANYbotics (Switzerland)
Substations can pose serious threats to personnel safety. They are high-voltage environments with exposed conductors and chemical hazards like transformer oil leaks, which can spark fires. To help ensure worker safety, Péter Fankhauser co-founded ANYbotics in 2016. ANYbotics is a spin-off from ETH Zurich’s Robotic Systems Lab, incubated at Wyss Zurich. The company developed ANYmal, a four-legged robot equipped with automated inspection tools to monitor power infrastructure autonomously. With maximum uptime and uninterrupted power supply being a top priority in electricity transmission, these robots can monitor assets in operation even in complex facilities and extreme weather, making them an ideal solution.
ANYmal navigates harsh industrial settings around the clock to detect faults and leaks while keeping human workers out of harm’s way. ANYbotics raised $60 million in December 2024 from Qualcomm Ventures, Supernova Invest, and others, bringing its total Series B funding to $110 million.
LiveEO (Germany)
LiveEO was founded in 2018 by Daniel Seidel and Sven Przywarra, two NewSpace enthusiasts driven by a shared vision to unlock the full potential of Earth observation insights for the benefit of mankind and the planet. The company uses satellite data and machine learning to monitor infrastructure from space, helping utility providers manage vegetation risks, improve service continuity, and improve safety.
LiveEO’s Treeline solution analyzes satellite imagery with advanced AI to detect risks such as tree encroachment, species health, and ground deformation. This enables utility providers to prioritize maintenance and avoid costly disruptions. By turning complex Earth observation data into clear, actionable intelligence, LiveEO makes grid operations more efficient and resilient. Their mission and technology have gained strong investor backing, with €25 million raised in Series B funding from NordicNinja and DTCF.
Redefining Grid Inspection Through Innovation
These startups are at the forefront of modernizing grid inspection, offering scalable, tech-driven solutions that make power infrastructure more intelligent, efficient, and climate-resilient. From autonomous drones to AI-driven software and satellite monitoring, they are transforming how utilities manage and maintain the electric grid in an era of rising demand and climate risk.
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