The Nest thermostat is the kind of energy tech that, to many, symbolizes the future. It’s smart, sexy and Wi-Fi enabled. It’s an Internet-of-things play that happens to be in the energy space. And it’s raised $80 million in funding. Well, yesterday Nest announced its first-ever acquisition: Boston-based MyEnergy, a consumer focused energy analytics tool.
I’ve known MyEnergy CEO Ben Bixby since 2009, when the company was called EarthAid, and have planned to write about the company for a while now. Basically, MyEnergy is a gorgeous web app that allows you to compare your utility bills with Facebook friends. Much like Nest, MyEnergy takes something typically seen as boring and gives it a shiny consumer makeover. (The underlying tech for getting the data is also impressive.) MyEnergy raised $4 million in 2011.
No word on the financial details, but a spokesperson for MyEnergy told me that “many” of the team members will transition to the West Coast to work out of the Nest office. There will be no changes for MyEnergy users, “for now,” according to the company’s blog post.
The most obvious reason this acquisition makes sense is that MyEnergy could provide Nest users – who’ve already ponied up for an expensive device, thereby demonstrating serious interest – more robust analytics on their utilities. As the Nest post put it:
Every day we get requests for more data: for spreadsheets, charts, detailed comparisons and, most importantly, energy savings translated into actual dollars. We’ve acquired MyEnergy to help us do both: the details and the dollars.
But a source of mine suggested a second reason: that MyEnergy’s data will allow Nest to better quantify for utilities the residential energy savings they can offer should those utilities choose Nest as a partner.
A separate source tells me that MyEnergy was fundraising up until quite recently. Whether they took the acquisition over a new round, or were unable to find funding in a rotten cleantech investment environment, I don’t know.
Either way, great to see Bixby and MyEnergy joining one of the most exciting energy startups in existence. Boston will miss them.
