One of the largest software giants in the nation has signed another partnership agreement with a growing Houston company offering energy analytics software.
Amperon will move its offerings, which include artificial intelligence-enabled predictive technology for power trading, onto Microsoft Corp.'s (Nasdaq: MSFT) Azure cloud computing platform as part of the partnership, the Houston company said March 5.
The big selling point for Amperon? Breaking into a tough utility market, according to CEO and co-founder Sean Kelly.
“Two of the main blockers to utility contracts [are] budget and implementation speed,” Kelly told the Houston Business Journal in an emailed statement. “Microsoft already has set aside budget with Microsoft Azure Consumption Commitment [or MACC] which makes the conversation easier. Secondly, Amperon's data management infrastructure coupled with MSFT's cloud capabilities make it easier and faster to onboard [utility customers] so they don't have to wait months or even years to see the benefits of AI forecasting.”
Another point that made the deal palatable for Amperon was Microsoft’s early embrace of companies such as OpenAI. Kelly also pointed to other Microsoft products such as Fabric and PowerBI that synergize with Amperon’s products.
A majority of Amperon’s customer base are not utility companies — Kelly said municipalities, cooperatives and traders are among the company’s most common clients. The Microsoft deal will not affect Amperon’s product rollout for these customers, Kelly said.
"We are pleased to collaborate with Amperon to enable our customers with a scalable data analytics platform for forecasting — one of the most essential ingredients to managing an increasingly complex energy grid," Hannah Grene, Microsoft's energy and resources global go-to-market leader, said in a March 5 press release.
Last fall, Amperon closed a $20 million Series B round led by Chicago-based Energize Capital. The company has drawn national attention, with both Time Magazine and capital markets firm Andreesen Horowitz including Amperon in lists of technology companies to watch.
Amperon continues Microsoft’s energy transition focus in Houston
Amperon is the latest energy transition company to attract Microsoft’s attention. The software giant made a big investment in Houston last year by launching its Energy Transition Center of Excellence at the Microsoft Technology Center at 750 Town and Country Blvd.
Following that launch, Microsoft signed an agreement with Massachusetts-based Context Labs, which is opening an office in Williams Tower in Houston’s Galleria area. That agreement, like Amperon’s, moves Context’s AI-enabled energy analytics software to the Azure platform.
“That partnership is a massive scale-up for Context Labs because the amount of inflow we’re getting with customer demand is pretty amazing,” Context Labs CEO Dan Harple said in an interview with the HBJ.
Even for operations outside of Houston, Microsoft has kept an eye on local companies. Houston-based microgrid developer Enchanted Rock has secured contracts to power the software company’s San Jose, California, data center in recent years.
Meanwhile, Houston-based Engie North America, a branch of French multinational company Engie SA, has struck partnerships with Microsoft that include the sale of power from renewable energy assets in Texas.
When it comes to investors looking into AI, part of their challenge is separating out how much of a company’s technology offerings are centered around AI. More than half of the 22 climate technology companies in Energize Capital's active portfolio have some form of AI-enabled offering in their technology stack, but that wasn't due to a specific strategy on the firm’s part, Tyler Lancaster, a partner with Energize Capital and a member of Amperon’s board, told the Houston Business Journal.
“We joke internally that without ever intending to, our focus on customer solutions has led us to a majority of companies including AI-enabled solutions,” Lancaster said. “[AI] isn’t a purposeful investment strategy on our part yet, but a good portion of our companies have access to proprietary data which can then feed machine learning models. AI is in a bit of a hype cycle [for investors] now, but there’s a lot of companies that pitch AI without having a clear vision for it.”
Lancaster also predicted that technologies related to AI infrastructure, such as support for data centers and ways to ease computing burdens on power grids, would be on the rise.
