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National Grid Partners

As the energy sector experiences an unprecedented shift, National Grid Partners continues to explore and shape the future of utility innovation. Our latest comprehensive survey captures how the industry is adapting to the challenges created by the global clean energy transition.

Charting the Course for the Future: Insights from National Grid Partners’ First Utility Innovation Survey

The energy transition is creating substantial new challenges for grid reliability, renewables integration, and financial risk management. Rapid electrification is complicating accurate forecasting amid shifting demand, soaring distributed energy resources (DERs), new requirements for carbon footprint modeling, and changing price signals. And all these variables are becoming mission-critical for energy traders, utilities, and system operators.

Houston-based Amperon is at the forefront of this transformation. Its AI-powered analytics provide hyper-accurate electricity forecasts that improve operational efficiency and optimize energy market participation.

This is the inaugural investment from National Grid Partners’ new, $100M commitment to back energy innovators embracing artificial intelligence (AI). It’s an investment that supports our broader mandate to take stakes in and support companies driving the digital transformation of energy. With a $20B total addressable market, Amperon is well-positioned to scale.

Several factors drove our investment decision, including:

●      The growing need for AI-powered energy forecasting. The rapid growth of renewables and battery storage requires better intermittency forecasting, while the AI-driven surge in data center energy loads adds new demand volatility. Moreover, the broad electrification of heating, transport, and industry are creating novel, hard-to-predict load patterns. On the market level, energy traders need better price forecasts and risk analysis.

●        A unique, AI-driven competitive advantage. Amperon's ensemble AI models adjust dynamically to real-time market conditions. They outperform legacy solutions for everything from meter-level demand to renewable generation forecasting. The company’s industry-leading tools continue to improve and optimize energy markets.

●        Strong market momentum. Amperon has already earned the trust of a large number of customers across major ISOs, driving growth in annual recurring revenue. The company’s target customer base now spans more than 15 markets across Europe. And we’re already seeing high stickiness from those customers due to the platform’s strong forecast accuracy, API integrations, and AI-driven insights that outperform internal models.

●        A world-class team. Sean Kelly (CEO & co-founder) brings decades of energy trading experience, while Abe Stanway (CTO & co-founder) is an AI expert with a track record in real-time machine learning for mission-critical applications. Sean and Abe have bolstered their team with energy market veterans from Genscape, Microsoft, and EDF, enabling rapid product expansion and geographic growth.

●        Strategic fit with National Grid. Not least of all, Amperon’s technology aligns with long-term trends National Grid is increasingly addressing at scale – including the explosion of energy resources and the need to build a more resilient, dynamic grid.

Amperon is solving one of the most complex problems in the energy transition: Accurate forecasting in a world of increasing volatility, decentralization, and AI-driven demand. Amperon represents a high-growth, strategic investment in the future of grid intelligence.

At National Grid Partners, we invest in companies that will define the next era of energy innovation. Amperon is exactly that.

Raghu Madabushi is a Director at National Grid Partners, investing in early-stage companies in the broad energy transition and enterprise software vertical. He has 20+ years of experience with technology, capital markets, and IP/innovation. He previously invested in deep tech and industrial infrastructure at SRI Ventures and GE Ventures; managed a large portfolio of open-source technology projects at the Linux Foundation; and headed early-stage startup investing at Intellectual Ventures’ Invention Development Fund. He received an MBA in Finance and Investments from Southern Methodist University and an MS in Computer Engineering from Iowa State University, and he serves as a Kauffman Fellow.

By Raghu Madabushi, National Grid Partners

Why National Grid Partners Invested in Amperon