Under the impact of AI power, "Digital Twin" rises... Nila Corporation receives 9.07 trillion KRW investment

To address the surge in power demand from AI data centers, Australian digital twin startup Neara has raised significant funding. Neara recently announced that it raised approximately $63 million USD (about 90.7 billion KRW) in Series D funding. The round was led by U.S. technology crossover venture capital firm Technology Crossover Ventures (TCV), with existing investors Partners Group, EQT, Square Peg Capital, and Skip Capital also participating.

Neara possesses digital twin technology that replicates power infrastructure in 3D, allowing for detailed modeling of power plants and transmission equipment structures. The platform combines artificial intelligence (AI) and the Internet of Things (IoT) to perform real-time simulations, enabling precise analysis of how actual power grids respond to disasters or demand fluctuations. Based on this, utility companies can maximize the use of existing infrastructure, predict accidents, and develop response plans.

Neara co-founder and Chief Commercial Officer (CCO) Jack Curtis said in an interview with The Wall Street Journal, “We originally planned to raise funds by the end of this year or early next year, but to cope with the rapid growth in AI data center demand, we moved up our schedule.” As global tech giants like Google (GOOGL), Microsoft (MSFT), Oracle (ORCL), and OpenAI are rapidly expanding AI-specific data centers, known as “AI factories,” power demand is also approaching its limit.

Curtis emphasized, “The current global power grid is under triple pressure from AI power demand, industrial electrification trends, and overall demand surges. Existing infrastructure is exceeding its design capacity. Now is the time for smarter, faster technology to better understand these situations.”

Neara has partnered with major power companies such as Essential Energy and Powerco in Australia, Southern California Edison in the U.S., and CenterPoint Energy, digitalizing over 15 million assets worldwide. The company plans to leverage this round of funding to advance both technology and business efforts, including hiring AI engineers and expanding into global markets.

Muz Ashraf, a partner at TCV and an early investor in Neara, stated, “Neara’s physics-based digital twin platform is a fundamental solution to the infrastructure crisis facing the power industry. It fundamentally redefines problems that existing companies have failed to solve.”

The company’s legal entity name is LineSoft Pty Ltd., founded in Sydney, Australia, in 2016. To date, the company has raised approximately AUD 116 million, with a current valuation of around AUD 1.1 billion. Through this funding round, Neara has become a new unicorn in Australia.