A former Pacific Gas and Electric engineer who spent a decade watching infrastructure projects stall because no one knew what pipes were buried underground has secured $26 million in Series A funding for his startup designed to prevent those delays. Josh Mackanic founded CivilGrid in 2020 after leaving PG&E, where a single unknown pipe once triggered a three-day scramble that cost $60,000 and nearly derailed a job site. The company compiles scattered information about utility infrastructure, land ownership, and environmental rules into a unified platform—what Mackanic calls "Google Maps for what's underground"—and sells access to government agencies, civil engineering firms, and utilities including his former employer.
The financing round was led by Spark Capital, with participation from Afore, A*, Ford Street Ventures, SNR, and Energy Impact Partners, a fund backed by multiple utility companies as limited partners. According to Mackanic, the involvement of Energy Impact Partners signals industry confidence in CivilGrid's approach. A case study conducted by PG&E identified $60 million in preventable paving expenses across 1,600 planned gas distribution projects by using the platform. Around 200,000 utility strikes occur annually in the United States because major utility operators like PG&E only track their own electric and gas lines, while pipes carrying water or sewage belong to other entities, along with the data pinpointing their exact locations.
Mackanic told TechCrunch that CivilGrid currently provides engineers with the data needed to decide where to place infrastructure, but the company plans to expand beyond information delivery. He envisions the platform recommending specific pipe placements, identifying required permits, and eventually filing those permits on behalf of customers. Christine Cowsert, senior vice president of enterprise business and technology modernization at PG&E, said in a statement that California's growing energy demands require the utility to "deliver the infrastructure they need safely, reliably, and affordably," and that tools like CivilGrid help teams "identify risks earlier, build more efficiently, and avoid unnecessary costs." Mackanic added that there's "a lot more" the startup could automate now that it has built a comprehensive dataset and captured users who make early-stage decisions about construction projects.
Mackanic explained that improving visibility into subterranean infrastructure isn't a new concept, but previous efforts failed to solve the challenges of collecting, organizing, and securing the data while also building partnerships with clients willing to pay for it. He left PG&E to launch CivilGrid because he believed the problem would be "better solved from the outside in than the inside out," not due to any lack of awareness or interest within utilities, which "run relatively lean" since customers don't want higher bills. With the fresh capital, Mackanic plans to bring on more customers and eventually tackle other regulatory obstacles that slow down infrastructure development in the U.S. He told TechCrunch that working at PG&E changed his perception of utility companies, which he once thought were boring but came to see as high-stakes operations that "work wonders every day" so people can turn on lights or make coffee without worry. If CivilGrid succeeds in automating permit workflows and route planning, utilities might redirect resources toward resilience and expansion rather than detective work, though the pace of adoption will depend on whether cost-conscious operators embrace upfront technology spending to avoid far larger delays downstream.