AI-powered planning for grid resilience, reliability, and wildfire risk reduction.
Why we invested
Extreme weather is putting unprecedented stress on the electric grid, and utilities are under pressure to make billion-dollar decisions about how to harden infrastructure before outages and wildfire ignitions escalate. Today, most still rely on coarse, outdated tools that can’t quantify how climate hazards—heat, storms, floods, and fire weather—affect specific assets or communities. Rhizome fills this gap by giving utilities an AI-powered platform that identifies vulnerabilities, models climate-driven risks at high resolution, and evaluates the impact of different investment strategies. The result is a clearer, data-driven foundation for decisions that improve reliability and directly reduce ignition risk across service territories.
Mish and Rahul bring a rare combination of deep technical expertise and firsthand experience working with utilities, which positions them to build the category-defining product in this space. Their platform gives regulators and utilities the confidence to prioritize, plan, and justify resilience spending at a moment when both grid reliability and wildfire prevention are top priorities. Rhizome’s early traction reflects the urgency of the problem and the strength of the team, and we were excited to join their first round at the encouragement of their lead investor, who saw the value of our product and climate-infrastructure experience.
Why this work matters
Climate change is increasing the frequency and severity of extreme weather events that threaten our electrical grid. Utilities and regulators face the critical challenge of allocating massive infrastructure budgets to build resilience against these growing threats. Rhizome's AI-powered platform provides the analytical tools needed to make these billion-dollar decisions with confidence, ensuring our grid can support the electrified future we need for decarbonization while maintaining reliability during extreme weather events.