Phaidra reposted this
It's been 4.5 years since Katie H., Vedavyas Panneershelvam and I started Phaidra. We raised our first (pre-seed) capital in Feb 2020, just one week before Seattle became the first US city to enter COVID lockdowns. Of the many lessons I've learned, one stands out: work with the best people. Get the right people on the bus (as Jim Collins says in his seminal book Good to Great). This applies equally to investors as it does to teammates. I'm both proud and humbled by the opportunity to work with the amazing team Index Ventures as we execute Phaidra's mission of AI for radical resource efficiency. Index is truly a cut above the rest when it comes to scaling exceptional companies. Martin Mignot and Ishani Thakur — we have a lot of building to do!
Climate change is the world’s biggest existential threat, and the growing impact of AI is undeniable. In 2022, data centers, crypto and AI accounted for an estimated 2% of global power demand (source: International Energy Agency). That percentage is expected to 𝗱𝗼𝘂𝗯𝗹𝗲 𝗯𝘆 𝟮𝟬𝟮𝟲. While AI contributes to the problem, it also holds keys to the solution. Enter our $12m investment in Phaidra, which uses AI and reinforcement learning to help data centers operate more efficiently. It optimizes cooling systems and reduces energy costs, which account for up to half of operating expenses and most of the carbon emissions (which vary depending on how the electricity is produced). We couldn’t have dreamt of a better founder/product/market fit. Jim Gao and Vedavyas Panneershelvam were behind one of DeepMind’s biggest achievements: a 40% reduction in the energy needed to cool Google’s data centers using AI-powered solutions. Katie H., an industrial control systems engineer, got word of their findings when she was at Trane as an engineering team lead. Later, she joined as Phaidra’s third co-founder and COO. The team brings a rare combination of experience that are critical in this space: ⭐ Deeply understand the customer and the real-world challenges of industrial automation ⭐ World-class AI research credentials ⭐ Deep data center and facility management expertise The challenge we’ve faced with trying to invest in climate is that most solutions are capex-intensive and hardware-related, which is tricky for the pure venture model. It is rare to find software-only companies making a meaningful climate impact. So I couldn’t be more excited that we met the Phaidra team and convinced them to partner with us. Welcome to the Index Ventures family, Phaidra. I’m excited to join your board and partner on this critical work.