Daylight Raises $9 Million in Series A Funding

Daylight, a decentralized physical infrastructure network (DePIN) project aiming to optimize energy distribution, has successfully raised $9 million in a Series A funding round, led by A16z Crypto.

Investors and Funding Details

Other notable investors in this round included Framework Ventures, Lattice Fund, Escape Velocity, and Lerer Hippeau. According to co-founder and CEO Jason Badeaux, the fundraising process was initiated and completed within 10 days in April. However, he did not disclose details regarding the valuation or the investment structure.

With this Series A funding, Daylight’s total funding has reached $13 million, which includes $4 million raised in seed funding during the summer of 2022.

About Daylight

Founded in 2022 by Jason Badeaux, Udit Patel, and Evan Caron—who all have experience in the energy sector—Daylight seeks to address the growing electricity demand driven by compute growth, electrification, and industrial reshoring. Badeaux remarked that traditional grid expansion models would struggle to meet this demand, hence the need for optimizing energy growth through decentralized energy initiatives.

Daylight’s decentralized protocol enables users to link their energy devices (like thermostats, batteries, electric vehicles, and solar inverters) to its app, allowing them to earn rewards. Additionally, users can access energy upgrades, including solar panels and electric vehicle chargers, through the Daylight marketplace, currently available in New York, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania, with expansion to Texas and California planned.

Functionality of Daylight’s Protocol

The Daylight protocol pools the available energy capacity from connected devices, providing it to energy companies. The proprietary energy data can also facilitate unique applications such as voltage monitoring to lower electrical fire risks for insurance.

Users earn points in the app as rewards, although details about converting these points into Daylight’s token remain undisclosed.

For its business model, Daylight intends to sell energy data and capacity to end customers across and beyond the energy sector. A16z partners Guy Wuollet and Ali Yahya pointed out that the energy sector, primarily regulated by monopolies in the U.S., is seen as ripe for disruption, emphasizing Daylight’s mission to build a decentralized protocol to allow developers to program the energy grid through distributed resources.

Building on Base

Daylight’s protocol is being developed on Base, an Ethereum Layer 2 network incubated by Coinbase. The protocol was launched in testnet, while its mainnet launch schedule remains unconfirmed.

Badeaux noted that, similar to renewable energy credits, the Daylight Protocol will incentivize users for providing energy capacity within its open-source network, aiming to create an economy around its energy capacities and data, facilitating interactions between energy companies and developers.