US-based grid technology firm Splight has announced the raise of $12.4 million to support the development of its machine learning solution that claims to unlock capacity across congested electric grids.

The SAFE funding round was led by Blue Bear Capital, with participation from ZOMA Capital.

Splight aims to use the funding to support its expansion in the North American and European markets, focusing on scaling its commercial and technical teams.

"Our technology solves one of the most urgent problems facing the grid today: how to deliver more electricity without waiting years for new transmission to be built," said Fernando Llaver, CEO and co-founder of Splight. "This new capital allows us to scale deployments of our flagship dynamic congestion management (DCM) product, unlocking the kind of transmission capacity that is urgently needed by grid participants like AI data centers and utility-scale grid resources."

The company will also use the funding proceeds to ramp up deployment of its dynamic congestion management technology in the US, launch new AI-enabled grid and data center tools, and expand its San Francisco headquarters with a larger Embarcadero office to grow its tech and product teams.

According to Splight, its DCM technology uses a proprietary machine-learning algorithm to unlock up to 100 percent more capacity on existing transmission lines. It achieves this by leveraging real-time grid data, transforming fast-responding assets, such as batteries and data centers, into operational tools that stabilize the grid. This, it claims, offers a more reliable alternative to weather-dependent dynamic line rating solutions.

"From the moment we met the Splight team, we were impressed with the team's deep operational knowledge of the grid and their machine learning expertise," said Carolin Funk, partner at Blue Bear Capital.

Splight said that its DCM can be deployed by utilities to provide extra transmission capacity or to increase operational reliability across their systems. This can be done by individual renewable power plants or large loads that are constrained by their inability to access transmission.

The company is the latest to emerge to tout an AI-powered solution to grid congestion. In July, Emerald AI raised $24.5m to support the development of its Emerald Conductor platform, which, the company claims, could enable data centers to obtain a grid connection significantly more quickly by managing energy consumption through AI.

Before this, in May, AI startup GridCARE raised $13.5m to support its solution that aims to leverage advanced generative AI-based analysis to detect pockets with geographic and temporal capacity on the existing grid, to reduce time-to-power for data centers to 6-12 months.