Now backed by two of the world’s largest owners of critical infrastructure, the Australian climate tech platform has cemented its position as a global leader in energy transition and resiliency enablement
The round was anchored by a consortium led by EQT (a leading global investment organisation), with participation from Partners Group (one of the largest firms in the global private markets industry) and Square Peg Capital (one of the company’s earliest investors). Additional support was provided from existing investors Skip Capital and Prosus Ventures.
The funding will accelerate Neara’s global operations across the United States, the United Kingdom, Europe, and Asia Pacific as the company continues to address increasing energy resilience and infrastructure modernisation challenges.
Neara’s 3D digital modelling technology enables utilities to adopt a more proactive approach to network optimisation through simulations surfacing safety and reliability risks and identifying the most effective remediation actions. Through Neara, utility partners perform critical analysis in just hours and days that would otherwise take months or years. This analysis enables utilities to execute faster and make more informed decisions on issues ranging from routine operations and load growth planning, emergency scenario response strategies, and double and triple-digit million-dollar grid hardening decisions without the need for verification from manual surveys.
Originally launched in Australia in 2019, Neara has become a global climate tech leader expanding and now scaling into North America and Europe to accelerate the clean energy transition. Neara’s technology has modelled over 12 million infrastructure assets covering more than 2.4 million kilometres across four continents, improving network risk assessment and enhancing reliability and resilience.
Neara’s extensive work navigating the complexities of Australia’s clean energy transition with local network utilities including Essential Energy, Ausgrid, Endeavour Energy, Powercor, and SA Power Networks, has supported its accelerated expansion into new markets. Neara’s global utility partners now include CenterPoint Energy and Southern California EdisonESB Networks (Ireland), Scottish Power (UK), and Hedno (Greece). in the US. Its European team has grown four-fold over the last twelve months with customers spanning ESB Networks (Ireland), Scottish Power (UK), and Hedno (Greece).
As global energy challenges intensify, government bodies are recognising the importance of technology in informing data-driven decision-making and aligning stakeholders on essential projects to ensure timely funding and execution. Neara’s network-wide simulations help utilities gain regulatory support by objectively demonstrating how proposed upgrades, including wind-resistant poles and flood-resilient network design, will improve reliability and resiliency. Through the platform’s capabilities, global utilities are identifying and addressing potential outage risks 9x faster, restoring power 3x faster and bringing new infrastructure online 85 per cent faster.
“We are asking the grid to do more in the next 10 years than we have in the last 50. Neara helps strengthen critical infrastructure to keep global communities safe, connected, and economically viable despite intensifying severe weather, age, and overuse. Reliable, affordable, clean energy depends on resilient high-functioning infrastructure, which demands the laser-focused, fast decision-making we’re empowering for utilities,” said Jack Curtis, Chief Commercial Officer at Neara.
Neara’s technology is playing a central role in the global energy transition by significantly simplifying the traditionally complex challenges of transmission design and construction hurdles. Neara’s simulation functionality also empowers utilities to optimise existing infrastructure, accelerating the integration of renewable energy sources by sourcing untapped network capacity. Neara will also expand its modelling and simulation capabilities to address new critical infrastructure sectors including telecommunications and public transportation. Neara is already supporting broadband infrastructure projects in the US, helping providers fast-track efforts to connect underserved communities.
“This investment marks EQT's first venture growth investment in an Australia-headquartered company, highlighting our ambition to support world-class platforms from early growth partnerships through to large-cap buyouts. We are excited to further advance Neara's growth and impact by leveraging our global network and expertise across energy transition, infrastructure augmentation and best-in-class software development," said Frank Heckes, Partner on the EQT Private Equity advisory team and Co-Head of EQT Private Capital Australia and New Zealand.
"EQT is focused on making responsible investments that address global challenges and drive innovation for a better future. Neara exemplifies this by empowering mission-critical service providers to enhance infrastructure reliability and efficiency, unlocking bottlenecks, and accelerating energy transition in key markets,” added Sam Franklin, Managing Director on the EQT Infrastructure advisory team.
Cyrus Driver, Managing Director at Partners Group, said, "In many cases, infrastructure is lagging behind rapidly changing societal needs, including across the energy grid, transportation, and digital infrastructure. As a result, it’s never been more important that every dollar invested in infrastructure demonstrably improves performance. Neara’s industry-leading technology is essential for every asset owner to run high-functioning and resilient infrastructure. We have deep thematic conviction in Neara's offering and we are already working with management on multiple opportunities to deploy its solutions within Partners Group's global network."
James Tynan, Partner at Square Peg, explained, “For most of us, infrastructure is invisible until there is a problem, but then it can be a matter of life and death. With infrastructure under pressure like never before, Neara’s unique ability to help intelligently and cost-effectively manage these critical assets could not be more important. At Square Peg, we concentrate our investments around a small number of outlier teams attacking critical, global problems, and we’re proud to be continuing to back Neara almost four years into our journey with them.”
To receive more information please visit https://neara.com/.
