Sunairio is a Baltimore, MD-based climate and energy analytics startup. Founded by Rob Cirincione, an energy trading veteran, the company develops high-resolution climate simulation technology for the energy sector. Its software platform leverages high-resolution historical climate data and future climate simulations to help renewables investors, energy traders, and utilities simulate energy-asset risk and grid variability. The company plans to use the $6.4M round to grow its team and expand availability of its new climate simulation technology. The round brought total funding to date to $8.8M. Sunairio was awarded an NSF Small Business Innovation Research grant in 2024 for its energy-industry-focused climate simulation technology. Sunairio is the first software platform to leverage hyperlocal climate simulation for energy prediction and planning. Its platform combines generative AI and advanced statistics with outputs from traditional global climate models to replicate local (3-km x 3-km) hourly weather patterns and climate trends for up to 15 years. The company says this approach can produce climate insights at roughly 1,000 times the resolution of traditional physics-based global climate models. Sunairio currently offers hyperlocal simulations for parts of the country and plans to expand these high-resolution insights across all of North America and beyond. An NSF SBIR Phase I grant will fund R&D to build a highly scalable simulation engine intended to make the solution orders of magnitude faster, with the company expecting the R&D to be complete within the year. The platform targets energy stakeholders — including investors, portfolio managers, renewable developers, and grid operators — to improve grid reliability and reduce weather- and climate-driven investment risk.

Total raised

$6M

Funding rounds

2

Latest round

Equity

Latest activity

Dec 2024