Smart water developer Subeca raises $6m in Series A funding

Subeca, an Internet of Things (IoT) startup that provides smart water technology, has raised $6 million in Series A funding in a round led by Paris-based utility company SUEZ.

According to the company’s release, the funding will be used to scale up its operations and meet market demand for its AMI solutions from small to medium-sized utilities.

The Series A was led by SUEZ, which develops digital and circular solutions in waste and water services, with participation from Amazon’s corporate venture Climate Pledge Fund and Burnt Ventures, a water sector-focused venture investor.

Subeca calls its solution a differentiated end-to-end IoT offering. Specifically, they have built a smart water meter register that retrofits onto a majority of existing water meters in under one minute.

For water utilities, this significantly reduces the cost of meter reading operations while increasing the amount of available data and insights to the utilities and their customers. Subeca does this via their smart meter register (called PIN) devices that is connected to the AWS cloud via Amazon Sidewalk.

According to the company, because of the cost and complexity of legacy technology solutions, over 40,000 utilities and businesses in the US do not have access to the benefits of advanced metering and sensing technologies.

It is in this gap that the company states their offering, the Blinc IoT module, which uses the Sidewalk network – a free communications network that covers more than 90% of the US population – to help customers manage water infrastructure and detect and resolve water leaks.

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Commenting in a release was Beau Schilz, AWS senior manager for water in the Americas: “Subeca offers a simple and secure service that helps Amazon, AWS and our utility partners gather timely and reliable data to manage water use without relying on traditional cellular or building network infrastructure.

“We’re excited to work with Subeca as we continue to improve the efficiency of water use in the communities where we operate as well as across our own operations, helping AWS make progress to meeting water positive by 2030.”

“Subeca has developed a disruptive smart metering solution that will provide access to a previously underserved tier of utilities in the US,” added Joshua Cantone, managing director of SUEZ Digital Solutions for North America.

“SUEZ, a leading provider of smart water metering solutions with more than 6 million units deployed worldwide, intends to leverage its expertise to support Subeca in scaling its offerings and go-to-market strategy.”

“Affordability challenges have stalled the adoption of smart metering across the US and globally. Subeca’s simple customer interface and integration with Amazon Sidewalk allows a new segment of water utilities to join the digital revolution,”said Christine Boyle, partner at Burnt Island Ventures.