The collision of AI's data center explosion and electric vehicle rollout is creating an unprecedented power crunch. Yottar, a UK startup that maps electrical grid capacity, just raised $1 million to help companies navigate the increasingly strained infrastructure and find locations where they can actually plug in their power-hungry operations.
Yottar is tackling one of the most pressing infrastructure bottlenecks of our time. As CEO Peter Clutton-Brock tells it, "The electrification super cycle is colliding with the AI data center boom. That's making the grid operators really struggle to deal with the backlog." The evidence is stark: around London, virtually all capacity for large-scale data centers has been consumed, leaving companies scrambling not for available power, but for upgrade timelines.
The startup just closed a $1 million pre-seed round led by Haatch with participation from Cape Capital and angel investors, TechCrunch reported exclusively. The timing couldn't be better. While competitors like Gridcare focus on convincing utilities they have more hidden capacity than they realize, Yottar takes a mapping approach, creating detailed visualizations of exactly where grid capacity exists and how much power each location can handle.
The customer roster speaks volumes. Tesla uses Yottar's SaaS platform to select sites for new Superchargers and upgrade existing ones. The UK's National Health Service relies on the platform to identify which clinics and hospitals can accommodate EV chargers, solar panels, and battery installations. "They can't afford to go through each of those site by site," Clutton-Brock explained to TechCrunch.
Yottar's sweet spot targets what Clutton-Brock calls "medium-sized demand developers" - companies using electricity rather than generating it, typically in the 1-5 megawatt range. This positions them perfectly for the current infrastructure reality where ancient grids strain under unprecedented demand from AI data centers, EV charging networks, and electrification projects.
The startup's data sourcing strategy demonstrates sophisticated understanding of the regulatory landscape. They pull information directly from distribution networks, which regulators now require to make publicly available. But Yottar goes deeper, licensing private data not available publicly and continuously updating records using anonymized data from successful grid connections made by their own customers.
