Why We Invested in Subeca
The humble water meter sits at the heart of the water sector. Without water meters, utilities wouldn’t be able to determine usage rates or future demand, detect leaks or breakages, calculate customers’ water bills or initiate water savings plans. But historic water meters are cumbersome and the majority still require an operator to go door-to-door to physically read the meter - which is not something anyone should be doing in 2025. Advanced Water Metering (AMI) has become standard especially for large systems, allowing water meter data to be sent directly and automatically to the utility. But the penetration of AMI in the US water industry got to 35% and then kinda….stopped. Problems abound. The cost to install towers, pay for 5G cellular, or manage a complex fleet of communications gateways is out of reach for the vast majority of already cash-strapped public and private utilities. Smaller water utilities, serving between 500-5,000 customers, can barely cover the cost of dedicated water metering staff, if at all. The need for a low-cost, integrated, smart solution is clear, and has been clear for some time.
Enter Subeca, an AMI platform that’s bringing the cost-effectiveness and distribution of Amazon to the utilities left behind by the AMI upgrade wave. Subeca’s core product, a water meter register, natively connects to Amazon’s Sidewalk network, a low-bandwidth, long-range wireless communication protocol supported by Amazon’s Ring and Echo devices. Subeca’s device is simple to install and fits over 95% of metal meter bases deployed across the US. They’re making water data accessible to utilities that have been historically locked out of innovation in this core area due to cost, and the Subeca leadership team insist on ‘making life easier for the person in the truck’, slashing the hours and sometimes days it takes to manually check meters, while also keeping the cost of digital transformation low. It’s an overlooked part of the market that is finally getting a much needed upgrade and we’re thrilled to be part of their journey. Here’s why we did it.
Making the Dumb Smart
The majority, 65% of water meters are still dumb, but broader IoT is even dumber, requiring complex and high-cost connectivity. At its heart, the issue with AMI is an IoT communications issue that has had scant solutions to date. Subeca’s primary product is the Pin - a smart water meter register natively built on AWS and leveraging Amazon Sidewalk. It works with existing or new water meters. The Pin transmits water meter data via Bluetooth every 900 milliseconds and to the AWS Cloud every 60 minutes. Bluetooth enables a modern interaction experience using consumer devices, including device configuration and local firmware updates. With the Pin, utility customers get high data resolution and reliability (even in low-flow conditions), and the integration of IoT connectivity enables remote monitoring, leak detection (broad, no ‘pinpointing’), and efficient data management. The unique multi-comms nature of Subeca devices allows for the transmission of data via three different communications protocols - Sidewalk, Bluetooth, and LoRaWAN - giving utilities a choice and flexibility to manage their AMI journey. It is also, crucially, positioned to be available just under procurement limits, meaning customers can easily buy, start using, and experience the value of the product (funding this kind of upgrade out of OPEX is really helpful).
Bringing the Genius of Amazon to Water. Literally.
The Subeca team is deeply rooted in Amazon’s core strategy of making buying things easy. Thanks to their manufacturing capacity (their facility in Dallas can produce up to 135,000 units in 2025), Subeca builds up a solid backlog of inventory and is able to bring the ‘Amazon experience’ to the smart meter market with high availability, low-cost, and short wait times for products. The simplicity of the mobile device–driven installation—requiring no network contract or setup—allows the team to bypass typical procurement hurdles by enabling customers to purchase small batches that remain below the utility’s procurement threshold. Small, medium and large utilities can buy, receive, install, and view live data from AMI registers in a matter of days.
Great Products Make Lives Easier
Subeca devices are an affordable, easy way to measure and manage water usage, with minimal or no gaps in coverage, thanks to the growing ubiquity of Amazon Sidewalk, and minimal manual intervention and associated cost. For small and medium utilities, this kind of tech makes the life of the person in the truck far easier, with less driving around and manually accessing meters. This enables better resource allocation and reduces operational cost inefficiencies, as well as improving safety - the truck is the least safe place to be for a water utility operator. Seamless purchasing and a plug-and-play install are core to the customer-friendly experience Subeca aims to deliver. For ratepayers, Subeca allows for a far better user experience, greater access to data, and a direct line of communication to utilities, enabling more customer control. Given the low cost of telemetry and the near elimination of ongoing maintenance for the customer, there is room for Subeca to expand its margins while still saving customers a significant chunk of money and delivering a super customer experience.
An Exceptional Team
Anne Mushow (CEO) is a serious operator and ex-Senior Director at Amazon and Sensus. She understands the path to industrialize a product and has the Amazon DNA around knowing thy customer. She is joined by Patrick Keaney (CRO), former worldwide lead of Amazon Web Services’ (AWS) water division, with an innate understanding of both his customer, and how to communicate to his customer and Kelly Galway, VP of Product, also former AWS. Kelly brings the Amazon rigor for product roadmap criteria and software development while continuously working backwards from the customer experience and going faster than competitors. This is as strong a team as we have seen, with extensive experience in the exact areas they need - metrology, IoT, and utilities.
Massive adjacencies
Anne and Patrick’s years at Amazon opened their eyes to the IoT revolution for smart appliances and devices and the shortcomings of wireless, fixed networks, and cellular. Sidewalk is a step change for IoT and Subeca is the first external utility product on the network. After utility customer and facility use monitoring, potential adjacencies could include smart cities, DTC tech, agriculture, air quality, gas metering, leak detection and flood control.
Subeca’s BLINC module is one of the only ones on the market with a multi-communication optionality, thus solving the major headache of how utility devices connect to the internet, using one piece of hardware. A major pain point in the world of IoT, potentially solved. Given the low cost of telemetry (thanks to the ubiquity of Sidewalk) and the near elimination of ongoing maintenance for the customer, there is so much room for Subeca to scale with their ability to reduce a clear, known, and despised cost item for customers. They represent a potential platform shift in IoT that’s deeply exciting. Alongside our co-investors Suez and Amazon’s Climate Pledge Fund, we’re delighted to join them on the ride. Anne, Patrick, Kelly and all the Subeca team - welcome to the Burnt Island.