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National Grid Partners

Congratulations to Corey Capasso and the Urbint team on their agreement to join Itron, Inc., a global leader in utility technology and infrastructure management. The acquisition, valued at $325 million and expected to close later this year, represents an important milestone for Urbint and a significant moment for the broader utility innovation ecosystem. 

From the beginning, Urbint has been driven by a clear and urgent mission: to make critical infrastructure safer and more resilient via artificial intelligence. Founded in 2015, the company developed a “Model of the World” that uses data such as weather, soil conditions, asset age, and urban density to anticipate safety incidents before they occur. 

At National Grid Partners, we recognized Urbint’s potential early and teamed with them to test and scale their predictive AI tools across our operations. Urbint’s solutions have become some of our most successful strategic deployments. 

In our gas business, Urbint’s damage prevention solution helped reduce third-party pipeline strikes by roughly 37 percent. This has saved National Grid millions of dollars each year and prevented costly service interruptions for customers. 

Following that deployment, we began using Urbint’s worker safety solution, which has enabled field crews to identify 35 percent more potential hazards than they could manually. By combining historical incident data, weather inputs, and crew activity patterns, the tool gives supervisors real-time visibility where risks are highest. 

Most recently, we began collaborating on storm damage prediction, leveraging Urbint’s AI to forecast and mitigate weather-related impacts on our networks and customers.  This kind of predictive intelligence is an increasingly vital capability as utilities face more extreme weather events. 

Each of these initiatives demonstrates what’s possible when strategic venture investing aligns with operational innovation. Urbint’s acquisition by Itron not only validates their technology but also highlights how our venture partnerships help us strengthen grid safety, resilience, and efficiency across our networks. 

It’s absolutely possible for startups to sell seven-figure ‘land and expand’ deals to utilities, but they have to understand how. Our Business Development team helps entrepreneurs navigate the process. Corporate venture capital groups always talk about whether an investment is for strategic or financial returns; this is a textbook example of an investment that’s generated both strategic and financial returns for National Grid. It should be viewed as a template for CVCs.

Exits are essential to the venture ecosystem. They provide returns that fund future investments; demonstrate tangible outcomes from innovation; and create pathways for startups to scale their impact within established companies. That’s especially meaningful now as the exit window for venture-backed startups has been closed since 2021-2022.  

For Urbint, joining Itron amplifies its mission to protect people, assets, and the environment. For the technology industry, the acquisition represents another proof point that AI and data-driven solutions are transforming how companies manage risk, resilience, and reliability. 

Congratulations again to Corey and the Urbint team and to our coinvestors at Blue Bear Capital, Energy Impact Partners, Piva Capital, and others who helped make this success possible. That includes National Grid’s natural gas teams in New York and Massachusetts. 

Together, we’re not just building smarter systems: We’re building safer, more reliable communities. 

By Pradeep Tagare, National Grid Partners

Urbint’s Exit: A Milestone for Utility Innovation and the Venture Ecosystem