Enlighted raises $25M for commercial sustainability

Tao Capital joins JPCB, RockPort, and DFJ Venture in backing business energy solutions provider

Enlighted, provider of smart sensors and analytics for businesses, announced today that it has secured $25 million in Series D funding from the company’s existing investors Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, RockPort Capital Partners, and Draper Fisher Jurvetson, along with new investor Tao Capital Partners.

Based in San Francisco, Tao invests across technology, transportation (Tesla, SpaceX, Uber), healthcare, education, sustainability, consumer, and real estate.

Fitting somewhere within a couple of those categories, technology and sustainability, Enlighted provides products and solutions for saving commercial businesses on energy costs through sustainability measures.

For example, one device offered includes the Smart Sensor, which monitors occupancy and motion, ambient light, temperature, and energy consumption from fixtures—data that is wirelessly transmitted back to the company's "energy manager." Not just providing one-off devices, however, Enlighted also offers larger-scale solutions that include retrofitting and new construction to reduce energy consumption costs for customers in commercial building spaces.

Enlighted also announced a new partnership with Square 1 Bank, a division of Pacific Western Bank, which will provide the company with $20 million in additional finances to help with these high-cost endeavors.

The company says it has installed smart sensors in over 100 million square feet of enterprise space, and thereby decreased customers’ lighting costs by up to 70 percent.

Customers today include Google, AT&T, HP, and the city of San Jose.

"This is no longer about just providing lighting controls," said Enlighted CEO Joe Costello. "Installing the Enlighted IoT platform is like giving your building a brain. We can provide software solutions for energy savings, asset tracking, real time information about building utilization, and security for buildings and people, to name a few.”

Because Enlighted isn’t just a device maker or app developer, but rather a full-fledged solutions provider for sustainable commercial spaces, it has taken to calling itself an IoT (“Internet of Things”) systems provider. That said, the company did just launch two new apps (Space for space planning and Aire for management of heating, ventilation, and air conditioning) to work alongside its data-collecting sensors.

Enlighted says it will use its new funding to expand internationally to France, Germany, and the United Kingdom.

As this is very much a growth-stage round for Enlighted, I imagine the prospect of an IPO or acquisition is in its future. To get a pulse of the company’s health, I’ve reached out to see if the company is profitable today and will update this story when I hear back.