AI vegetation-intelligence provider Overstory has raised US$43 million in Series B funding to accelerate the development of its risk-modeling technology used by utilities to prevent wildfires, reduce outages, and optimize vegetation-management budgets. The round, led by Blume Equity with participation from Energy Impact Partners and existing investors, will support product expansion and global growth as utilities face rising weather volatility and increasing grid-resilience demands.
Investment Context and Growth Priorities
The new capital represents a significant scale-up milestone for the Amsterdam- and Boston-based company, which has grown rapidly alongside heightened concern about grid-sparked wildfires. Overstory plans to invest in its machine-learning and satellite-analytics stack, deepen capabilities within its wildfire-intelligence offering, and broaden adoption across the more than 50 utilities, cooperatives and municipalities it currently serves in the Americas and Europe.
How Overstory’s Technology Enhances Vegetation Intelligence
Overstory’s platform integrates high-resolution satellite imagery with proprietary AI models to assess vegetation conditions at a tree-level resolution, giving utilities a granular view of hazards that traditional inspection cycles or regional wildfire-risk maps often miss. The system interprets vegetation density, species type, moisture levels and proximity to electrical assets, enabling utilities to triage work based on quantifiable risk rather than broad geographic classifications.
A central component of the company’s newest product release is its Fuel Detection Model, an AI engine designed to identify vegetation most likely to ignite or accelerate fire spread. By pinpointing where “high-risk fuels” are present along transmission and distribution corridors, utilities gain a more precise basis for wildfire-mitigation planning, targeted trimming and capital-project prioritization.
Operational Impact for Utilities
Vegetation management remains one of the largest operating expenses in the utility sector and the leading cause of both outages and wildfire ignitions. Utilities adopting vegetation-intelligence tools are increasingly shifting from scheduled cycles toward risk-based workflows, enabling more efficient crew deployment, fewer unnecessary trims, and stronger justification for preventive interventions.
Overstory’s approach supports this transition by converting satellite observations into operationally relevant recommendations—such as specific trees or spans requiring immediate attention, which can be integrated directly into utility asset-management and field-operations systems.
Market Momentum and Sector Dynamics
The funding aligns with broader investment trends in climate-tech and grid-resilience solutions, where utilities are confronting higher tree mortality, increasing labor costs and more extreme weather events. As wildfire-related liabilities grow, utilities are under pressure to adopt intelligence-driven mitigation strategies that demonstrably reduce ignition risk while controlling operating costs.
Overstory’s rapid customer growth, including adoption by six of the ten largest utilities across the Americas (per company statements)—illustrates the acceleration of AI-enabled vegetation analysis as a standard tool for resilience planning.
Competitive and Technical Landscape
While utilities have long relied on static wildfire-risk maps and manual inspection programs, the sector is steadily moving toward dynamic, data-rich models driven by remote sensing, AI and geospatial analytics. Overstory distinguishes itself by offering fuel-condition analysis tied directly to electrical asset locations rather than generalized environmental risk zones.
As grid operators intensify resilience planning, particularly in high-fire-risk regions of the western United States and southern Europe, demand for near-real-time vegetation intelligence is expected to expand, benefiting suppliers that can deliver high-accuracy insights with operational clarity.
