Thursday 9 January 2020

BP invests in Chinese AI energy management tech specialist

BP Ventures has stepped into the artificial intelligence (AI) sector in China, leading an investment round in an AI energy management specialist.

The $3.6 million (£2.7m) backing in R&B is intended to support BP Alternative Energy’s focus on low carbon power, storage, digital energy value chain and wider Energy as a Service (EaaS) offers.

R&B’s energy management systems are designed to predict, control and improve a building’s energy use – its Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) applies AI techniques to energy diagnostics and optimisation in the commercial and industrial (C&I) sector.

The technology processes data to generate valuable insights and recommendations on how to improve energy efficiency and enhance predictive maintenance in buildings, allowing building managers to make informed decisions to optimise energy performance and reduce carbon emissions as a result.

Glenn Wu, COO & CTO of R&B Technology said: “R&B has spent years developing its core product, BeOP, an AI platform that navigates principles and relationships between data and data, things and things and data and things. We are delighted to be partnering with BP, one of the world’s leading energy companies, to empower the energy industry with AI that enables unprecedented automation and smartness in digital energy.”

The investment is part of R&B’s latest funding round, led by BP Ventures and supported by CLP Innovation Ventures Limited – a subsidiary of CLP Holdings Limited – and JAFCO Asia.

Graham Howes, Managing Director of BP Ventures, Asia, added: “Improving the energy efficiency of buildings will be crucial for the transition to a lower carbon world. The C&I buildings sector in China is large and still expanding, so the potential to affect change is significant. R&B’s technology is aimed firmly at this important opportunity.”