Trilliant latest Smart Grid company to get big VC dollars

Trilliant latest Smart Grid company to get big VC dollars. Following in the footsteps of GridPoint, BPL Global and Silver Spring Networks, Trilliant Incorporated has secured $40M in venture financing from MissionPoint Capital and zouk ventures. The Redwood, CA-based company is best known for its mesh networking communications infrastructure. Increasingly, however, it is emphasizing the solutions it can build on top of that infrastructure, including demand response and meter data management.

   QuickTake: With a team of veterans from related industries, Trilliant is one grid firm that sees where things are headed. All the more so since its new VC partners are amongst the brightest around. Expect it to joust with Gridpoint to become a de facto platform for managing the Smart Grid. That coveted position is still up for grabs since many of the logical platform providers – Areva, ABB, Siemens – don’t understand that the grid sector is now more like the PC market of the 80s or the Internet market of the 90s than the traditional utility sector of the 60s and 70s.

   Speaking of people that don’t get it, you might ask yourself this: If the Silicon Valley VCs are as smart as they think they are, why did they lose this opportunity in their own backyard to rival investors from Connecticut and London? I guess it’s easy to get distracted when you are busy shooting yourself in the foot with braindead biofuels deals.

   Trilliant press release

   MissionPoint Capital home page

   zouk ventures home page