Prisma Photonics, a start-up based in Tel Aviv, announced $20 million in a Series B funding for its optical monitoring solutions.
Prisma Photonics said its fiber sensing works by transmiting optical pulses down a fiber. A minute fraction of light is reflected from each point along the fiber. The system measures the reflected light to determine the strain, temperature, pressure, and other quantities over hundreds of kilometers of fiber with sub-meter resolution.
The funding round was led by New York-based global private equity and venture capital firm Insight Partners, with participation from SE Ventures (Schneider Electric's venture capital arm) and Future Energy Ventures, the venture capital investment and collaboration platform of E.ON. This brings the total funding raised by Prisma Photonics to over $30 million. The company's earlier investors include i3 Equity Partners and Chione Switzerland.
Prisma Photonics customers manage thousands of kilometers of infrastructures, among them New York Power Authority, Israeli Natural Gas Lines, Israel Electric Corporation and other tier-1 utility operators).
"With the demand for energy on the rise, utility operators find it harder to keep their assets operating smoothly and safely. It is a challenge to monitor and maintain these long infrastructures," said Dr. Eran Inbar, Prisma Photonics CEO. "Our Machine Learning based solutions are unique as we address this huge scale challenge with ease and accuracy. The investment is a vote of confidence from Insight Partners and a first of its kind in a new domain of critical infrastructure management."
