Grid2Home Gets Granite Ventures Seed Funding for Smart Grid Software

A new “smart grid” startup has emerged in San Diego.

Grid2Home, which describes itself as a “smart energy communications company” that develops software for wired and wireless home area networks (HAN), is joining a technology land-rush among San Diego wireless and software companies seeking to stake a claim in smart grid territory. The local stampede already includes Proximetry, On-Ramp Wireless, PCN Technology, Pervasive, and Solekai Systems, among others.

Grid2Home was launched in Campbell, CA, last year by founding CEO Michael Bourton and chief technology officer Donald Sturek, who raised $1.5 million last October out of a planned $2 million round, according to a regulatory filing. The company apparently has been in San Diego—operating under the radar—since March, when former Qualcomm VP of Engineering Rick Kornfeld became CEO, according to his LinkedIn profile.

In a statement today, Grid2Home says it has raised an undisclosed amount of seed funding in a round led by San Francisco-based Granite Ventures. Granite Ventures managing director Sam Kingsland also is joining the board. The company also announced that Douglas Rasor, the former Texas Instruments Health executive who is also a director of San Diego’s On-Ramp Wireless, is joining Grid2Home as board chairman. The company says the new funding will enable Grid2Home to customize its software for multiple platforms and expand its business “across the Smart Grid HAN ecosystem.”

That means Grid2Home’s software, which provides two-way data communications from a meter to “smart” household appliances and electric vehicles. Such technology would enable home-owners to monitor energy efficiency data, allowing them to better control time of use and improve a home’s overall energy efficiency. The company says its customers include semiconductor manufacturers, smart appliance manufacturers, and automotive companies.

Author: Bruce V. Bigelow

In Memoriam: Our dear friend Bruce V. Bigelow passed away on June 29, 2018. He was the editor of Xconomy San Diego from 2008 to 2018. Read more about his life and work here. Bruce Bigelow joined Xconomy from the business desk of the San Diego Union-Tribune. He was a member of the team of reporters who were awarded the 2006 Pulitzer Prize in National Reporting for uncovering bribes paid to San Diego Republican Rep. Randy “Duke” Cunningham in exchange for special legislation earmarks. He also shared a 2006 award for enterprise reporting from the Society of Business Editors and Writers for “In Harm’s Way,” an article about the extraordinary casualty rate among employees working in Iraq for San Diego’s Titan Corp. He has written extensively about the 2002 corporate accounting scandal at software goliath Peregrine Systems. He also was a Gerald Loeb Award finalist and National Headline Award winner for “The Toymaker,” a 14-part chronicle of a San Diego start-up company. He takes special satisfaction, though, that the series was included in the library for nonfiction narrative journalism at the Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard University. Bigelow graduated from U.C. Berkeley in 1977 with a degree in English Literature and from the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism in 1979. Before joining the Union-Tribune in 1990, he worked for the Associated Press in Los Angeles and The Kansas City Times.