Prisma Photonics raises $20 Million

Prisma Photonics Team; Photo credit – Maxim Dinshtein

TEL AVIV, Israel, Feb. 9, 2022 — Prisma Photonics, the award-winning, Israeli startup which monitors large scale infrastructure, announced today that it raised $20M in a Series B round led by New York-based global private equity and venture capital firm Insight Partners, with participation from SE Ventures (Schneider Electric’s venture capital arm) and Future Energy Ventures, the venture capital investment and collaboration platform of E.ON. The investment will accelerate the company’s growth and support new customers and projects. This round brings the total funding raised by Prisma Photonics to over $30 million. The company’s earlier investors include i3 Equity Partners and Chione Switzerland.

Prisma Photonics solutions cover multiple markets, which share the need to monitor and manage large-scale infrastructures such as power transmission grids, oil and gas transmission pipelines, long-spanning railways, highways, subsea cables and pipes, and more.  Its fiber sensing technology offers safer, secure, efficient, and cost-effective operations while protecting the environment by preventing spills, wildfires, and other environmental hazards.

Prisma Photonics’ solutions monitor these using the pre-existing optical fibers and manage great distances, of up to thousands of kilometers, without installing any sensors on the infrastructure itself. Events and alerts are reported in real-time and within meters of accuracy.

“With the demand for energy on the rise, utility operators find it harder to keep their assets operating smoothly and safely. It is a challenge to monitor and maintain these long infrastructures”, said Dr. Eran Inbar, Prisma Photonics CEO. “Our Machine Learning based solutions are unique as we address this huge scale challenge with ease and accuracy. The investment is a vote of confidence from Insight Partners and a first of its kind in a new domain of critical infrastructure management.”

“Prisma Photonics is solving a critical challenge for utility operators, by allowing them to monitor the safety and ongoing operations of their infrastructures,” said Ganesh Bell, Managing Director at Insight Partners. “Prisma Photonics’ breakthrough technology is a great example of combining deep engineering and AI to solve real-world problems of significant consequence. Insight is excited to partner with Eran and the team on this exciting next step in the company’s growth journey.” Ganesh will join the Prisma Photonics board.

“This investment comes in the footsteps of a commercial agreement we signed with Prisma Photonics last year”, said Barbara Frei, EVP Industrial Automation at Schneider Electric. “We see the potential and believe that with these solutions our customers can drive efficiency and sustainability through energy and resource loss avoidance.”

“Prisma Photonics’ AI-driven Hyper-Scan Fiber-Sensing solution helps to improve grid safety, security, and reliability of critical large-scale infrastructures”, said Ohad Mamann, Investment Principal at Future Energy Ventures. “We are pleased to partner with the team to further support the digitalization of the grid.”

Prisma Photonics customers manage thousands of kilometers of infrastructures, among them New York Power Authority, Israeli Natural Gas Lines, Israel Electric Corporation, and other tier-1 utility operators). The company has won multiple awards, including recently, the NYPA Smart Innovation award and Red Herring’s 2021 European Top 100.

About Prisma Photonics
Prisma Photonics helps keep the most critical large-scale infrastructure up & running with a quantum leap in utility monitoring. Our customers take responsibility for their assets with real-time actionable insights. Featuring an innovative pay-as-you-grow model responding to safety and operational scenarios.

Founded in 2017 by an expert team with a proven track record of building and scaling companies in the deep-tech domain

Prisma Photonics enables response-ability at scale.

About Insight Partners
Insight Partners is a leading global venture capital and private equity firm investing in high-growth technology and software ScaleUp companies that are driving transformative change in their industries. Founded in 1995, Insight Partners has invested in more than 400 companies worldwide and has raised through a series of funds more than $30 billion in capital commitments. Insight’s mission is to find, fund, and work successfully with visionary executives, providing them with practical, hands-on software expertise to foster long-term success. Across its people and its portfolio, Insight encourages a culture around a belief that ScaleUp companies and growth create opportunity for all. For more information on Insight and all its investments, visit insightpartners.com or follow us on Twitter @insightpartners.

About Schneider Electric
Schneider’s purpose is to empower all to make the most of our energy and resources, bridging progress and sustainability for all. We call this Life Is On. Our mission is to be your digital partner for Sustainability and Efficiency. We drive digital transformation by integrating world-leading process and energy technologies, end-point to cloud connecting products, controls, software, and services, across the entire lifecycle, enabling integrated company management, for homes, buildings, data centers, infrastructure, and industries. We are the most local of global companies. We are advocates of open standards and partnership ecosystems that are passionate about our shared Meaningful Purpose, Inclusive, and Empowered values.

About Future Energy Ventures
Future Energy Ventures is the venture capital investment and collaboration platform of E.ON. It invests in digital and digitally-enabled technologies and business models that have the potential to redefine the future energy landscape. Typically focusing on digital, scalable, and asset-light companies seeking Series A and beyond funding, Future Energy Ventures seeks to capitalise on the investment opportunities presented by the transition to this new energy future and maximise scaling opportunities for its portfolio.