A startup started by a former AWS powerhouse team is coming up with $7M to help solve the data center power crisis
Soma Energy, a startup founded by former Amazon energy executives, appeared on Thursday with $7 million in funding.
The Vancouver, BC-based company has built an AI platform for power producers and data centers, helping both to use their power in real time to save money and expand their available power. Technologies include utilities including wind, solar and batteries as well as energy demand management such as data center workloads.
CEO Ath Caramanolis said you can imagine the electricity system as a complex network of roads and highways where electrons – instead of cars and trucks – travel.
“Our software is a kind of control plane that helps provide electronic self-driving in these highway systems,” Caramanolis said in an interview with GeekWire.
A more efficient route for electron traffic can deliver more power to handle the competing demands of the grid.
“There’s low-hanging fruit everywhere, and opportunities for large energy users like data centers to better utilize the grid exist throughout North America,” Caramanolis said.
Industries, utilities and elected officials around the world are racing to increase power supplies as data centers and electrification in transportation, heating and other sectors drive high demand. Data centers alone are expected to more than double in capacity — from 82 gigawatts in 2025 to 219 in 2029 — with much of that growth fueled by AI, according to McKinsey.
Amazon hired Caramanolis in 2018 to create an energy development team at AWS, which managed about 10 gigawatts of renewable energy across its global network of data centers. Seattle City Light, by comparison, has a generating capacity of about 2 gigawatts.
Caramanolis then hired Mario Souto, Soma Energy’s founder and chief technology officer, to build the machine learning platform AWS used to develop its renewables portfolio. The startup’s third co-founder, Chief AI Scientist Henrique Hoeltgebaum, is an expert in AI-driven prediction and anomaly detection for energy systems.
Soma Energy was launched in February 2024 and has 18 employees. The startup has deployed 2 gigawatts of assets in the US with customers that include several private power producers and five data center companies – among them H5 Data Centers, whose sites cover a large area in the city of Seattle.
“By connecting existing resources, we were able to reach capacity much faster than expected, accelerating our time to market and removing a significant barrier to expansion,” said Josh Simms, CEO of H5 Data Centers, in a statement.
The seed round was led by Category Ventures, with participation from Haystack, Panache Ventures, RRE Ventures, TO.VC, Uncork Capital and Walter Kortschak. The investment will allow the team to hire new staff in engineering and sales roles and expand its reach across North America.
“Having personally managed hyperscale energy systems, the founders built Soma Energy as if they were a customer themselves,” said Villi Iltchev, partner at Category Ventures.
