IT solutions provider Electric has made a shocking amount of progress since its 2016 inception as a start-up in New York. Electric Founder and Chief Executive Officer Ryan Denehy’s journey as a technology business leader began with his retail analytics startup Swarm Mobile, which was bought out by Groupon in 2014 in a deal that retained him to oversee Operations and Strategy. Denehy used his experiences to build what he has labeled an “AI-driven” problem solver as Electric’s base product.
Now, his company has announced that it collected $40 million in a Series C round of funding spearheaded by Greenspring Associates. Electric is poised to lead the IT support industry into a new age where its services are a fundamental part of almost every business regardless of its size or working model.
Electric uses its AI to automate a broad spectrum of basic online inputs, such as password retrieval and enterprise platform connection, to save time for employees, but those are only at the tip of what the artificial intelligence iceberg can do. Denehy said, “Electric manages the entire IT function by providing an IT platform that highlights data and insights about the business and real-time support through Slack or Microsoft Teams. SMBs have traditionally been forced to either work with local IT providers or hire an internal person who may or may not be dedicated or trained on the complexities of IT issues.”
A clever modification of the ticket system has users tag an AI bot “@Electric” on a Slack channel for a near-instantaneous prognosis and a tailor-made troubleshooting toolkit. Electric takes pride in its staggering 99% resolution rate—any IT confusions from users are obligated to vanish within an hour of initial contact.
Electric’s platform Turbine is the conduit for true clarity on a company’s IT shortcomings, generating an analytical report of request volume and internal resolution rate. Turbine’s IT Scorecard program tracks the strength of a company’s applications with security tests for outdated systems or weak firewalls. The Scorecard also determines which users are shirking two-factor authentication and seeks out other ways to tighten online security.
Electric’s new funding coincides with a continuing focus on online business and remote work, an inevitable shift sped up exponentially by the COVID-19 pandemic. What Electric does to stand out from its innumerable competitors is provide a unifying set of IT services that can work for companies of any size but achieves an unsurpassed level of single-user satisfaction. The company, which has raised $52 million before this, now has the support of Bessemer Venture Partners, GGV Capital, 01 Advisors, Primary Venture Partners, Atreides Management, and Vintage Investment Partners. Electric will use the funding to go all-in on its SMB IT optimization crusade.
