Today (Thursday), Israeli startup Aperio Systems announced an $8.5 million Series A funding round. The investment was led by National Grid Partners (NGP), the VC and innovation arm of National Grid, one of the biggest energy companies in the world.

“As with everyone else, COVID delayed the round”

Aperio develops a system that detects data anomalies in IoT sensors, with a focus on physical measurements such as electrical current, pressure, temperature, etc. Over the last two years, Aperio has added to its platform the ability to detect anomalies sourced from cyber-attacks.

Aperio’s system develops AI-driven models that represent normal IIoT sensor behavior, which is based on past data collected from those sensors. VP R&D at Aperio, Ido Halevi explained in a conversation with Geektime that “the biggest challenge is testing the models so that they don’t generate false readings.” He adds that the system has the unique ability to test the sensor’s “fingerprint”, and through that detect any anomalies in the data.

“Additionally, what makes our system unique is the fact that there is no need to install new sensors, as the readings depend on past data from existing sensors. This enables easy and secure installation at scale,” continued Halevi.

Regarding funding during the COVID-19 crisis, Halevi says that “as with everyone else, COVID delayed the round completion, mostly due to the fact that the fundraising process was fully remote and not done in person. We lucked out that our round included strong strategic investors, and our solution has become more important than ever.”

“Data integrity has become the number-one inhibitor to maximizing ROI in digital solutions for industrial organizations, with over 50 percent of today’s data science budgets dedicated to cleaning up data quality,” said Jonas Hellgren, CEO of Aperio Systems. “Aperio’s innovative technology solves this problem for customers all over the world. With this investment from world-class strategic and financial investors, we now have the ability to scale our solution and provide comprehensive, long-term support for global industrial leaders.”

Aperio was founded in 2016 by Yevgeni Nogin and Michael Shalyt. The company states that the newly funded capital will enhance product development, alongside talent recruitment. The company has raised $11 million to date.