ONYX Insight Acquires ELEVEN-I

ONYX Insight has acquired UK-based ELEVEN-I, a company that
specializes in advanced blade monitoring technology. The
acquisition shows the wind industry's move towards supporting
companies that can prevent expensive turbine breakdowns. Sign up
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YouTube channel here. Have a question we can answer on the
show? Email us! Twenty twenty-five has been a record-breaker
for energy deals - over four hundred billion dollars in
acquisitions, the highest in three years. But buried in all those
massive oil and gas mergers is a quieter revolution happening in
the wind fields of the world. It started in March last year when
Macquarie Capital, the Australian investment giant, made a move
that sent ripples through the wind industry. They acquired Onyx
Insight, a British company that had been quietly revolutionizing
how wind turbines are monitored. Onyx wasn't just another tech
startup - they were monitoring seventeen thousand turbines across
thirty countries, serving seven of the world's top ten wind
operators. Macquarie knew what they were buying. This wasn't just
about the technology - it was about the data. In the wind business,
data is the new oil, and Onyx had been collecting it from turbines
spinning from Texas to Tasmania. But Macquarie wasn't finished. A
few days ago, Onyx announced they had acquired Eleven-i, a smaller
British firm run by Bill Slatter. While Onyx could monitor most
parts of a wind turbine, they had a critical blind spot: the blades
themselves. Slatter had spent six years perfecting sensors that
could detect blade problems weeks before they became catastrophes.
His technology had successfully spotted a crack smaller than one
meter, three weeks before the most sophisticated drones could see
it. In an industry where a single blade failure can cost millions
and shut down entire wind farms, that's pure gold. Here's what they
don't tell you about the wind industry: it's not just about
building bigger turbines anymore. As these giants grow longer than
football fields and taller than skyscrapers, they're failing in
ways nobody anticipated. Blade detachment, tower collapse,
catastrophic gearbox failures - the list goes on. The smart money -
and we're talking about some of the biggest infrastructure funds in
the world - has figured out that the real value isn't in building
more turbines. It's in keeping the ones already spinning from
falling apart. The math is simple: artificial intelligence and data
centers are driving electricity demand through the roof. The U.S.
could see data centers consuming twelve percent of all electricity
by twenty twenty-eight. That's staggering demand that can't wait
for new power plants to be built. So investors are swarming
companies that can squeeze more power out of existing
infrastructure. Onyx, with its Macquarie backing, can now offer
wind farm operators something they've never had: a complete picture
of their turbine's health from the foundation to the blade tips.
The Eleven-i acquisition fits perfectly into Macquarie's broader
energy strategy. They've been on a buying spree - solar developers,
waste management companies, renewable energy platforms. In
Australia alone, they've completed sixty-five acquisitions across
the energy sector. But here's the bigger picture: the wind industry
is consolidating at breakneck speed. Just like oil and gas, where
the top fifty companies have been whittled down to forty through
mega-mergers, renewable energy is heading the same direction. The
survivors won't be the companies that build the most turbines.
They'll be the ones that can keep them spinning reliably for
twenty, thirty, even forty years. As Dr. Zhiwei Zhang, Onyx's chief
commercial officer, puts it: "Failures don't just drive unplanned
costs - they can escalate into catastrophic events, including blade
detachment and full turbine collapse." The wind industry's gold
rush days of easy government subsidies and guaranteed returns are
over. What's left is the harder work of engineering reliability
into machines that must withstand decades of punishment from Mother
Nature. In this new reality, a small British company that learned
to listen to wind turbine blades whisper their troubles has become
worth millions to one of the world's largest infrastructure
investors. And Bill Slatter? He didn't just sell his company and
walk away. Last month, he announced on LinkedIn that he was taking
on a new role as Director of Blade Products at Onyx Insight. After
six years building Eleven-i, he's now helping integrate his
blade-whispering technology into a global platform that monitors
turbines on five continents. The acquisition wave rolling through
renewable energy isn't just about money changing hands. It's about
building the technological backbone for a world running on wind,
solar, and batteries instead of coal, oil, and gas. The companies
getting swallowed up aren't failing - they're succeeding so well
that the infrastructure giants can't afford to let their
competitors have them. This consolidation represents a fundamental
shift in renewable energy from growth at any cost to operational
excellence and reliability - a maturation that signals the
industry's evolution from startup phase to industrial scale.