The startup Delfos raised R$ 5 million in a new round of investment. The investment was made by DOMO Invest, leader of the round, by EDP Ventures, the EDP Group's venture capital investment vehicle, in addition to BMG Uptech and Bossa Nova. This is EDP's second contribution to the startup, which developed a software to optimize performance and reduce operational risks based on artificial intelligence for renewable energy assets such as wind, photovoltaic and hydroelectric plants. In just five years of history, Delfos has built a solid and quick history of success. Currently, it has operating contracts with EDP in Brazil and with other players in the energy sector in the country, and ended 2020 with projects and contracts that reach 3 GW (gigawatts) in assets.

“So far we have focused on technology and on building successful cases with clients who have a name and support in the market. From the investment that we received, the main objective is to execute the product development roadmap, aimed at meeting the market demands for a low carbon economy and to structure the sales machine to execute our projected growth. With EDP's strategic support and DOMO's vision of how to transform our technology into something that we can grow more commercially, we hope to expand our solution to several players in each vertical that we work on ”, says Guilherme Studart, CEO of Delfos.

Regarding the investment, Rosario Cannata, investment manager at EDP Ventures Brasil, and Marcello Gonçalves, partner at DOMO Invest, say they are excited about the round and project a great future for the startup amid the big transformation in the energy industry over the next years.

“We are very excited about this new investment round at Delfos. We have an old relationship with a startup, which was our first investment in Brazil and the first in the portfolio in which we do a follow on. This second contribution reinforces our long-term commitment to startups that provide strategic to the EDP Group, in addition to reflecting the assertiveness in choosing the company, which managed to develop cutting-edge technology and today stands out in the market, investors of the caliber of DOMO”, points out Rosario Cannata.

“There is enormous potential in that market. The world is undergoing an energy transformation and the operation and maintenance of assets. More and more sensors are installed on the equipment and we need to extract information from this data in a scalable way to increase the operational safety and profitability of industrial operations and power generation. The digitalization of the energy industry is just beginning and the Delfos team still has a lot to explore ”, says Marcello Gonçalves.

               Trajectory

The history of Delfos began in 2016, when the startup won the EDP Open Innovation award, EDP's global acceleration program at the time. The victory earned 50 thousand euros in prize money, in addition to mentoring with the EDP group. In early 2018, Delfos developed a pilot project with EDP Renováveis ​​in a wind farm in Belgium. The failure prediction process, tested on 11 turbines, increased its analysis capacity and improved the ability to handle data, generating more assertive models and improved analysis panels for the Belgian complex.

The performance of the solution attracted the interest of EDP Ventures, which elected the startup for its first investment in Brazil. At the time, EDP's Venture Capital vehicle led a R$ 1.5 million round together with BMG and Bossa Nova. The resources were used to consolidate the robustness of the platform, increasing the scalability, in addition to improving the reliability of the data, making the system capable of operating in real time and generating a virtual clone to capture possible failures.

              About Delfos

Delfos is a Brazilian technology company internationally recognized for the development of applications that use advanced artificial intelligence techniques to solve the main problems in the operations of critical assets in the wind, solar, hydroelectric power industry and offshore drilling platforms in the mining industry. oil and gas. Delfos' software has more than 1,500 assets integrated into its system, from wind turbines, hydroelectric plants and photovoltaic plants. In December 2016, Delfos won the global innovation award EDP Open Innovation. In addition, several technical papers have been presented in international scientific forums in the energy sector where they expose the innovations in artificial intelligence algorithms that he has developed to solve the main problems in the sector. The most recent publication was made in Austin, United States, where, in August 2020, he participated in the main technology conference for the O&G industry - the IADC Advanced Rig Technology Conference. In 2020, it was selected by Google to participate in its startup acceleration program, Google Accelerator. In addition, it has been exploring opportunities for internationalization in the offshore energy market in Norway.

              About DOMO Invest

Founded five years ago, DOMO Invest is one of the main Venture Capital Managers in the country. It emerged from the alliance between successful entrepreneurs and executives with extensive experience in M&A, Capital Markets and fund structuring, to contribute to professionalization of this market in Brazil. In addition to its DOMO Ventures fund, focused on technology-based B2C early stage / pre Series A startups, the Manager is also responsible for the management of FUNDO ANJO, focused on co-investments in the “angel” phase and the DOMO Enterprise fund, focused on B2B startups early stage / pre Series A, which generate solutions for large corporations. DOMO Invest partners have participated in more than 150 investments and M&A transactions over the last 10 years in technological businesses and have complementary credentials. In addition, they have a strong long-term alignment, which makes it possible to permanently monitor startups in the portfolio in order to develop them in the most profitable way possible.

              About EDP Ventures Brasil

Created in September 2018, EDP Ventures Brasil is the first investment vehicle in the Brazilian electric sector, with resources to be allocated to startups operating in six verticals: renewable energy, smart grids, energy storage, digital innovation (blockchain, IoT , big data, virtual reality), customer-focused solutions and cross-cutting areas (legaltechs, fintechs, HRtechs). Interested parties can access the website www.edpventures.vc for more information. In addition to Delfos, startups Colab, Dom Rock, Fractal Engenharia, Clarke Energia, Time Energy, Voltbras and Blue Sol have already received investments in Brazil. Since 2008, the EDP Group's Venture Capital vehicles have invested 41 million euros globally in 32 startups, which together employ more than 1,500 employees and have more than 100 million euros in revenue per year.