Thread is a rapidly growing software-as-a-service provider for electric utilities and generation. Pulse 2.0 interviewed Thread CEO and founder Joshua Riedy to learn more about the company.
Joshua Riedy’s Background
Riedy was born and raised on a remote ranch near Thunder Hawk, South Dakota. And Riedy said:
“I’ve always had a passion for utilities – rural cooperatives in particular, considering my paternal grandfather founded Grand Electric following a tragic accident. This led me to become the self-taught technical founder that I am today.”
Formation Of Thread
How did the idea for Thread come together? Riedy shared:
“I founded Thread alongside co-founders Dr. Jim Higgins (aviator) and Dr. Travis Desell (computer scientist). We met at the University of North Dakota while creating software for FedEx. Building on that experience, we focused our efforts on digitizing energy assets such as wind turbines and worked directly with Xcel Energy, a prominent regional investor-owned utility. A combination of initial funding from Microsoft’s TechSpark program and personal encouragement from their President, Brad Smith, resulted in the founding of Thread (formerly known as Airtonomy and Evolve Analytics), which is now only the second North Dakota company to reach Series A.”
Favorite Memory
What has been your favorite memory working for the company so far? Riedy reflected:
“My best memories are rooted in people and experience. The satisfaction of providing a useful tool for the utility sector is beyond compare, but my favorite memory is two fold. It includes direct experiences with Microsoft President, Brad Smith (via Microsoft’s TechSpark program) and Xcel Energy CEO, Bob Frenzel.”
Core Products
What are the company’s core products and features? Riedy explained:
“Helpful background information on the problem that Thread’s products solve:
1.) Utilities depend on the reliability of their systems. Inspections today of transmission and distribution lines are done at pre-scheduled intervals (e.g. 1x/year, 1x/quarter) or only when damage and operational interruptions occur. Often, only problematic infrastructure is recorded, leading to reactionary maintenance and repair. In turn, the evolution of health from correct operation to poor condition is largely unknown, leaving infrastructure vulnerable.
2.) Typically, inspections generate an insurmountable volume of data, from photos, videos, paper records, thermal imaging, drone monitoring, and more. Furthermore, inspection data is accompanied by weather records, vegetation encroachment, LiDAR and GIS, and even word-of-mouth knowledge sharing. Without a system in place to organize and categorize this data, making it useful for timely risk detection is difficult.
3.) Data collection is made even more challenging when storms or wildfires roll in. Trying to capture field notes and hazard reports is nearly impossible while trying to maintain the operation of the network, much less keeping that information organized against a digital asset database. High-quality data resources lead to faster reaction times, weather-based location targeting, and higher-quality storm and wildfire response.”
Thread’s core product is an Asset Management Workspace for energy & utility operators called UNITI:”
“1.) At its core, UNITI is a collaborative workplace for utilities to see their data, review it, talk about it, and plan for the future. It’s an asset-centric environment for planning and maintaining our nation’s critical infrastructure. Pilot your teams towards predefined goals, track work orders, and guide projects through aggregated dashboards with network-wide views. UNITI is the digital space where work gets done.
2.) UNITI is a web-based application built specifically for electric utility and generation. It uses asset-centric architecture to organize imagery and inspection data against a digital record of physical infrastructure. Everything from field inspection, annotation, and review, to sharing quantitative asset health information with operational teams, is anchored to the individual asset. The platform enables users to gain a deeper understanding of their infrastructure by knowing when and where to reinspect and efficiently collect new data. UNITI allows utilities to close the loop on proactive asset performance.
3.) The platform also includes access – customer setup dependent – to an autonomous data collection system that instantly delivers accurate asset inspection insights, using autonomous, mobile robotics (drones). The system itself consists of an onboard processor equipped with Thread’s proprietary Artificial Intelligence algorithms and backend mission control software. It also features a suite of ERP integrations that pull real-time asset data from the customer’s existing software stack to enable data collection with appropriate contextual information. Thread’s UNITI platform equips energy and utility operators with the ability to autonomously inspect (digitize) their fleets of assets (across wind, oil, gas, linear, and more) themselves.”
Challenges Faced
What challenges has Riedy faced in building the company? Riedy acknowledged:
“The utility sector is bombarded with false promises from technical solutions that are often out of touch when it comes to what the industry actually needs. Professional services masquerading as SaaS offerings are prominent, and breaking down those misperceptions happens one customer victory at a time.”
Evolution Of Thread’s Technology
How has the company’s technology evolved since launching? Riedy noted:
“When the company first launched, it was born from the idea that the energy & utility world needs a better way to ensure the uptime of its assets (e.g. oil tanks, power transmission lines, wind turbines). Today, these assets are inspected using manual methods such as helicopter flyovers or people climbing up on ropes & ladders, whose findings are eventually written down using pen & paper. Recognizing the danger and inefficiencies associated with these asset inspections, Thread (then Airtonomy) set out on a mission to automate these inspections using mobile robotics (drones) and machine learning that would allow frontline workers to simply push a single button to initiate a drone that would fly itself and regularly inspect for prospective damage that could lead to downtime.”
“Since its founding, however, Thread noticed a more fundamental hole in the way Operations and maintenance (O&M) are done at scale across utilities today. Not only do these inspections often take place manually, in the case of in-house drone usage, there is no single source of truth for where the asset health records live. In the medical world, you used to go to the doctor’s office and they would pull out a physical file with printouts of patient notes, x-rays, physical exams, and more, but they were all specific to that doctor.”
“If you went to another doctor in another state, they would need to call your primary doctor, ask for a copy of everything, and hopefully receive that same information. Over time, the industry developed a digital system of record for this – pioneered by Epic Systems – where every doctor can see in real-time your electronic medical record, anywhere in the world, in the same format, with relevant contextual information for diagnosing health. Thread, with its UNITI platform, is now seizing a similar opportunity to develop a system of record for all asset health in the utility world. Envision a dashboard where executives, front-line workers, and everyone in between can log in and very quickly see inspection imagery, previous maintenance records, user input data around damage findings, and more without needing to compile notes/data across their ERP, CRM, and internal team messaging systems. This is the progression Thread has made since its founding – effectively recognizing that the fundamental platform for storing all the operations & maintenance data is more critical to digitizing our nation’s assets to begin with vs. the inspection automation itself (something Thread also does at scale).”
Significant Milestones
What have been some of the company’s most significant milestones? Riedy cited:
“Significant milestones for the company to date include supporting a handful of major utilities across the United States, Canada, and Europe such as Xcel Energy and Constellation Energy.”
“Thread has also established partnerships with asset protection companies including Mistras Group and is working with the U.S. Air Force to develop an autonomous system to ‘enhance security’ at Grand Forks Air Force Base in North Dakota. The award, which was made by AFWERX, an arm of the Air Force Research Laboratory, will help ensure the 5,773-acre base is protected against threats, intrusions and breaches, while freeing up resources to address additional security concerns.”
Customer Success Stories
After asking Riedy about customer success stories, he highlighted:⠀
“1.) Otter Tail Power’s Sustainable Transformation with Thread – Otter Tail Power, committed to a cleaner and sustainable future, embarked on a journey to transition to new technologies and energy sources, aiming to deliver reliable, affordable, and environmentally responsible power to its customers. A key milestone in this pursuit was the completion of the Merricourt Wind Energy Center, harnessing some of the nation’s best wind resources. However, managing the infrastructure, particularly the maintenance of 206 wind turbines across multiple locations, posed a challenge in terms of time and cost.”
“In search of a more efficient and cost-effective solution, Otter Tail Power turned to Thread. The collaboration involved Thread guiding Otter Tail Power in purchasing and managing its commercial-grade drone, enabling the company to directly oversee its wind turbine program.”
“Thread’s automated asset inspection software, coupled with comprehensive training, empowered Otter Tail Power to conduct its blade maintenance program in-house. The platform provided timely and accurate asset data, eliminating the need for external service providers, scheduling complexities, and additional costs. Thread’s software not only streamlined data organization and analysis but also enabled customers like Otter Tail Power to compare critical inspection data, analyze trends, and assess overall asset health and performance.”
“The results of this partnership were exceptional for Otter Tail Power:
1.) Increase in Cost Savings:
a.) Owning and operating its own drone proved to be a significantly more cost-effective solution for Otter Tail Power compared to hiring external contractors.
2.) Increase in Lifespan of Wind Turbine Assets:
a.) The implementation of a more efficient and effective blade maintenance inspection program resulted in an extended lifespan for Otter Tail Power’s assets.
3.) Increase in Efficiency:
a.) With the support of Thread, Otter Tail Power achieved a 2X to 3X increase in the number of blade operation inspections performed within the same timeframe as competitors.
In summary, the collaboration between Otter Tail Power and Thread not only helped the company achieve its sustainability goals but also delivered tangible benefits in terms of cost savings, asset lifespan extension, and operational efficiency. Otter Tail Power is now better equipped to navigate the evolving energy landscape and contribute to a cleaner, more sustainable future.”
Funding
After asking Riedy about the company’s funding, he revealed:
“Thread has raised about $18 million, which includes its recent Series A-1 financing round closed in Q2 2023 along with prior Seed and Pre-Seed capital.”
Differentiation From The Competition
What differentiates the company from its competition? Riedy affirmed:
1.) Currently, utility inspections are reviewed asset-by-asset with the focus being individual components, poles, towers, or stations. Broad-scale decisions are difficult to make when inspection data is so specific. With UNITI’s aggregate dashboard views such as the number of high-severity assets, damage evolution over time and geographically grouped work orders, operators can make better decisions at scale. This is something that no current competitive platform or service (e.g. ERPs like SAP, CRMs like SalesForce, ‘autonomous inspection’ providers like SkySpecs) offers.
2.) UNITI captures the decision-making process from inspection through repair and replacement by recording all the steps along the way. UNITI arms users at every level from specific one-to-one asset insight to full network data aggregation and dashboarding.
3.) On the inspection piece specifically, Thread enables in-house, on-demand inspection: These operators no longer need to hire a third-party drone (or traditional inspection) service provider. Instead, they can use their own service staff to perform inspections around the clock – all thanks to Thread’s autonomous capability. Thread enables autonomous inspection. With the push of a button, our platform eliminates the need for scheduling inspections months in advance.
4.) Thread’s platform is asset type agnostic: Whereas a number of the current competition’s solutions are asset-specific (i.e. inspection or data collection for wind, inspection or data collection for solar, inspection or data collection for XYZ), Thread’s platform was designed with the desire for asset versatility in mind and works across all asset types (oil, wind, gas, linear, etc.). By enabling customers to perform in-house, on-demand inspections, they can create a digital record that represents asset health through the use of common methodology across entire ecosystems (i.e. power generation, transmission, distribution) in UNITI.
Future Company Goals
What are some of the company’s future company goals? Riedy concluded:
“Thread’s main future goal is to be the central platform for managing operations and maintenance at scale all across utilities. As the grid continues to become more complex through the next couple of decades with the large-scale transition to renewable energy, operators’ ability to diagnose the health of their assets and guarantee uptime is critical both for our nation’s safety as well as their profit margins and Thread aims to enable this digital transformation for utilities.”
