Two months removed from taking over EQT Corp., the Rice brothers have upped their investment in fracking software company, Cold Bore Technology Inc.

Cold Bore, headquartered in Calgary, Alberta, said Sept. 11 it had secured a second round of strategic growth funding from Rice Investment Group (RIG). The size of the investment was not disclosed.

RIG is a $200 million multi-strategy fund formed in 2018 by Daniel, Toby and Derek Rice following the sale of their former company, Rice Energy, to EQT Corp. The brothers have since seized control of EQT through an activist campaign led by Toby Rice.

The firm made its initial investment in Cold Bore in October 2018 with Toby Rice joining the company’s board as well. RIG aims to invest between $1 million and $40 million across the upstream, midstream, oilfield services and energy technology sectors.

“Having RIG increase their position in Cold Bore at this time is further validation of what we’re building and the industry’s appetite for our technology,” Cold Bore President Brett Chell said in a statement.

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Cold Bore’s SmartPAD™ uses a patented combination of valve positioning and pressure monitoring sensors, field data collection systems and proprietary software to fully digitize completions operations. Its industrial IoT platform allows, for the first time, real-time operational data to be remotely accessed from anywhere in the world by those monitoring onsite activity.

Proceeds from the RIG financing will be used to scale Cold Bore’s teams and technology to meet a “considerable market demand” being seen for its platform, according to a press release from the company.

In the past six months, Cold Bore said it has signed and executed service agreements for its SmartPAD™ technology with fracking operators throughout North America, including six of the top 10 producers.

In the release, Derek Rice, partner at RIG, noted that the E&P business model is shifting from production growth to delivering sustainable shareholder returns through efficient resource development.

“An operator’s completion activity typically accounts for over 70% of its capital budget and can be a source of dramatic cost reduction with the right digital solutions,” he said adding that Cold Bore’s platform “goes beyond simple data aggregation, identifying tangible cost savings that immediately add value to the bottom line.”

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