encoord Raises $2M In Seed Funding Led By KittyHawk Frontier

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encoord secured $2 million in a seed extension round led by KittyHawk Frontier, with participation from new and existing investors, bringing its total funding to around $8-9 million across multiple rounds. This capital aims to fuel platform enhancements for SAInt, team growth, and market expansion amid rising demand for integrated grid planning tools.

encoord’s latest seed round totals $2 million and is positioned as a seed extension (sometimes referred to as seed-2). The round was led by KittyHawk Frontier, a venture firm specializing in frontier technologies like energy and AI. Paul Burgon, a partner at KittyHawk with expertise in energy and climate investments, joins encoord’s board as an observer to guide strategic growth. This follows previous raises and grants, reflecting steady progress in building its energy planning platform.

Founded in 2018-2019, encoord is based in Edgewater, Colorado, and employs 11-50 people. Led by CEO and co-founder Dr. Carlo Brancucci, the company develops SAInt, a software platform for modeling energy networks and markets. It integrates financial and operational planning across electricity generation, transmission, distribution, and distributed energy resources (DERs), helping stakeholders optimize capital expenditures and accelerate planning. encoord serves utilities, developers, operators, and regulators in over 13 countries, focusing on challenges like renewables integration and system electrification.

The proceeds will support SAInt’s development, including new features for scenario analysis and optimization. Team expansion is a priority to enhance expertise in areas like modeling and sales, while market entry targets regions with high energy transition needs, such as North America and Europe. This aligns with broader trends in grid modernization.

KittyHawk Frontier views encoord as a key player in the $2-3 trillion power sector transformation, praising its potential to cut costs and timelines. The firm’s focus on mission driven tech underscores confidence in encoord’s role in enabling a reliable, affordable grid, though the competitive landscape includes evolving tools from incumbents.

encoord, a software company specializing in energy system planning, has made significant strides in addressing the complexities of the modern power grid through its flagship product, SAInt (Scenario Analysis Interface for Energy Systems). Established in 2018 (with some sources noting 2019 as the operational founding year), the company operates from Edgewater, Colorado, and Essen, Germany, blending North American innovation with European energy expertise. With a team of 11-50 employees representing over 15 nationalities, encoord provides tools, data, and advisory services to utilities, network operators, technology developers, regulatory agencies, and research organizations worldwide. Its mission centers on facilitating the energy transition by integrating planning across siloed sectors, tackling issues like electrification, renewables integration, data overload, outdated systems, and coupled energy networks.

The company’s core offering, SAInt, stands out as the industry’s first fully integrated platform for financial and operational grid planning. It enables end to end modeling that spans electric generation, transmission, distribution, and DERs, incorporating optimization for system expansion, operations, and markets, alongside simulations of electric, gas, and thermal networks. Key applications include transmission constrained generation planning to jointly assess new capacity needs; system electrification analysis to evaluate impacts on power and gas systems; DER planning to manage uncertainty and value; technology evaluation for economic and reliability assessments; and optimized data center siting, considering transmission availability and flexibility. encoord has deployed solutions in 13 countries, earning trust from industry leaders through its ability to deliver quantitative insights for strategic decisions, risk management, and energy transition planning.

Leadership is anchored by Dr. Carlo Brancucci (CEO and Co-Founder), who brings extensive experience in energy modeling and has been a frequent speaker at industry events. Dr. Kwabena Pambour serves as CTO, overseeing technical development. Other key figures include Dr. Erik Ela and Quentin Watkins as Senior Advisors; Wallace Kenyon as Chief Product Officer; Jacob Kravits in research and presentations; William Frazier (Allister William Frazier) in planning solutions; Andres Peluso in optimization; Nicola Zaccarelli in thermal modeling; Ian Wilcox in sales and marketing; Ernie Baske; and Emre Utku Solak. This multicultural team has driven encoord’s participation in high profile collaborations, such as a December 2025 white paper with Camus Energy, Princeton University’s ZERO Lab, and Google, demonstrating how flexible grid connections and bring your own capacity (BYOC) can accelerate data center interconnections by 3-5 years while maintaining >99% grid availability and minimizing costs to ratepayers.

encoord’s funding history reflects a trajectory of incremental growth, starting with early seed investments and grants to support R&D and commercialization. The latest round, a $2 million seed extension, was led by KittyHawk Frontier and included new and existing investors. This brings the company’s total raised to approximately $8.09 million to $8.37 million across 5-6 rounds, depending on the source. Paul Burgon from KittyHawk will serve as a board observer, providing strategic input on scaling in the energy sector. The funds are earmarked for platform development (e.g., enhancing SAInt’s features), team expansion to bolster expertise, and entry into key markets driven by electrification and renewables demand.

Prior rounds include an unattributed $1.3 million in November 2025; a $250,000 grant from the Colorado Office of Economic Development and International Trade (OEDIT) in June 2024 for integrated energy planning in Colorado; a seven figure investment in January 2022 (noted as the second in two years, with one source specifying $2.4 million); and an initial seed of $1.07 million. Additionally, encoord GmbH, along with 18 European partners, secured a €6 million grant in spring (likely 2025) for collaborative projects. These resources have enabled milestones like the launch of SAInt 3.0 in conjunction with earlier funding.

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KittyHawk Frontier, the lead investor, is part of KittyHawk Ventures, a 2015-founded firm headquartered in Los Angeles with offices in San Francisco, Salt Lake City, New York, and Austin. It focuses on seed stage investments in frontier technologies, including AI, energy, aerospace, healthcare, advanced materials, and robotics, while its secondaries strategy targets pre-IPO opportunities via partnerships like Nasdaq Private Market. The firm acquired Exit Ventures in October 2025, bolstering its energy and climate focus under Paul Burgon. Burgon highlighted encoord’s potential to dominate a multi billion dollar market by reducing costs and timelines in the energy value chain.

encoord’s activities in 2024-2025 underscore its thought leadership. It contributed to the Energy System Integration Group’s (ESIG) Integrated Planning Guidebook in June 2025, offering frameworks for aligning planning stages. Team members presented at events like the IEEE PES Optimization Innovations Summit (December 2025), ESIG workshops (August and June 2025), T&D World webinars (August 2025), IEEE PES General Meeting (July 2025), and more, covering topics from stability in modern systems to electricity-gas coordination. In 2024, highlights included a Colorado OEDIT grant in May, panels at WiresGroup (April), JUMPP Clean Energy Conference (April), Gurobi Summit (March), ESIG Spring Workshop (March), E-world (February), and recognition as a Top 10 Innovator by Darcy Partners (February). Co-authored articles with ScottMadden in Energy Central (December and September 2024) emphasized integrated planning’s role in reliability and decarbonization.

Social media buzz around the funding includes posts from @TheSaaSNews and @raisingfi on X, confirming the $2 million seed in energy tech from Edgewater, CO. encoord maintains its own X account (@encoord) with 77 followers, used for sharing updates on the energy transition. LinkedIn activity, including Burgon’s post, garnered congratulations from team members and links to related articles on flexible data centers.

In the broader context, encoord’s funding arrives amid a $2-3 trillion global power sector shift, where integrated tools like SAInt could mitigate risks from renewables variability and large loads like data centers. However, the sector faces debates on balancing affordability, reliability, and decarbonization, with encoord’s contributions to guidebooks and research positioning it as a facilitator. While the investment signals confidence, ongoing challenges include competing with established utilities’ tools and navigating regulatory variations across markets. encoord’s trajectory suggests potential for significant impact, provided it leverages this capital to deepen integrations and expand partnerships.

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