Brighte

Last week we hosted a Graduate Program Assessment Centre and what a morning it was! We were blown away by the calibre of young talent walking through our doors. Ambitious, curious, and full of potential. These are exactly the kind of people we love to back. We can't say too much just yet, but we're incredibly excited to welcome our incoming graduate cohort to the Brighte very soon. To every candidate who came and gave it their all, thank you. The future is looking very bright. ✨ Shoutout to our facilitators who ran the session! Clara Smith, Emma Stebbing, Melanie Maroun Karen Kiang Tamar Nicholas 🚀 #BrighteCareers #GraduateProgram #BrighteLife #Talent

Last week I shared that we're all writing the AI playbook as we go. Here's another chapter from us… Brighte has a network of over 2,600 solar and energy vendors across Australia. Before a vendor can offer Brighte credit products to their customers, or participate in our government and corporate partner programs, they go through an accreditation process. We check things such as their credit history, fraud signals, biometrics, licensing, reputation, business registration, industry qualifications, approved equipment and much more. It's thorough because our customers and partners trust us to get this right. The old process involved many weeks of back and forth. It was manual in many parts of the process and created friction for vendors who just wanted to get out there and help their customers start saving money from solar and batteries. So our team built something. Five specialised AI agents, each with a distinct role, now work together across a single orchestrated workflow. They pull live data from 9 third-party sources, run 30+ verification checks, and hand off to each other depending on what the data returns. We deliberately chose different models for different tasks: Google Gemini 2.5 Pro for search and verification, GPT 4.0 via Azure for document analysis and reasoning, and Playwright via MCP (Model Context Protocol) for navigating external sites that don't have APIs. The whole thing is orchestrated through n8n workflows running on AWS. The agents don't just follow a script. They adapt based on what they find, escalate edge cases, and compile a structured summary for human review. 90% of the process is now automated. A human is still in the loop for every decision. That's deliberate. AI should inform these decisions, not make them. The result: accreditation now takes under a week. What that means in practice is that a solar and battery installer in south east Queensland (just like East Coast Energy Co. who's pictured here) can get accredited with Brighte and start helping their customers in days, not weeks. That's real impact for real businesses and the households they serve. This was built by Violet Rish (pictured), Peter Pinda and their team. They deserve the credit. This is post two in our weekly series on the AI journey at Brighte. We're sharing what we're building, what we're learning, and what's actually working. Let's keep writing this playbook…

Here's something I am learning about AI and rolling it out at Brighte... The hardest thing isn't picking which model or writing the strategy. It's realising that the thing keeping me up at night with excitement is keeping someone on my team up with anxiety 😨 The second hardest thing is there's no playbook for this. It's happening as we speak. We're writing the playbook as we go. At Brighte, we're busy rolling out agentic AI across our operations. Real stuff, shipping to production, changing how we work. And I realised the thing slowing us down wasn't the technology. It was that we hadn't made it safe for people to say how they felt about it. So at our all-hands this week, I stood up and we started this conversation together. People move through real emotional stages when AI changes their work. Resistance. Experimentation. Pushback. The ‘aha’ moment. And then the hard question nobody talks about: "If AI can do this, what am I worth?" I told our team: if you're pushing back, that's healthy. If you're experimenting, keep going. If you're asking that hard question, that might be the most important stage of all, because reinvention starts there. This week we put an AI emotional journey framework on all our meeting room walls. We're asking teams to use it in all our meetings and to start conversations to identify which stage we're each in and help people work through the journey together. Some other questions we’re going to be asking each other: - Where did using AI let you down this week and what did you learn from it? - What’s one thing AI helped you do this week that surprised you? - Is there something you're afraid to say say about how AI is changing your work? - What would your AI ‘aha’ moment look like? The early signal: people are saying things out loud that they were only thinking before. That's how you build the psychological safety that AI adoption actually requires. AI at Brighte isn't just about making energy equipment even more affordable and accessible for our customers and making it even easier for our vendors to close their sales. It's about making sure our people are equipped and supported to drive those outcomes. Because people drive technology outcomes. Not the other way around. We're going to start sharing more about the journey we're on and hope it helps others as they embark on their own. Let's start writing this playbook… #thriveonchange #brightertogether

Big news, Brighte has achieved SOC 2 Type II compliance. This is a significant milestone for us, and for everyone who trusts Brighte with their data. SOC 2 Type II means our security controls have been independently audited and proven to work consistently over time. It’s a clear signal to our customers, vendors, and enterprise partners that their data is in safe hands. Huge thanks to the teams at Sensiba LLP and Drata for their rigour throughout the audit process. And to Suresh Kadmuri, Rafael Cavalcanti, Parth Khatri, Shiva Paudel, and the wider Brighte team who put in the steady, behind-the-scenes effort to make this happen.

Our team is still buzzing from this week’s Sydney Home Show! Through our partnership with Commonwealth Bank on their Home Energy Upgrades program, we spent three days chatting to thousands of customers eager to learn how they can make their homes more energy efficient — from solar and batteries to smarter energy choices that are better for the environment and their wallets. The buzz from every conversation reminded us exactly why we do what we do. A huge shout out to everyone involved who made the event a success!

We’re incredibly proud to see our Founder and CEO, Katherine McConnell appointed to the Board of the Tech Council of Australia at such an important time for Australia’s tech sector The next decade will be crucial in shaping Australia’s place in the global tech economy — and we’re ready to help drive that momentum. At Brighte, we’re building digital infrastructure that connects households, energy technology and capital to enable electrification at scale. We look forward to Katherine bringing our experiences of successfully scaling a technology platform to support the sector’s continued growth. Congratulations to the Tech Council of Australia and also incoming CEO Kate Cornick on the next chapter https://lnkd.in/gu9NNNNm

Last week we brought together our Brighte Stars ✨ winners for a special All Stars celebration. It was a day dedicated to recognising the incredible people who help make Brighte shine. They cooked, laughed, shared stories, and even learned how to make pasta together. 🍝 A huge thank you to our winners for the energy, care, and excellence they bring every day. Days like this remind us why celebrating our people matters! #BrighterTogether #BrighteLife #TeamBrighte

As the Tasmanian Government Energy Saver Loan Scheme wraps up, we are proud to celebrate supporting over 8,000 households and businesses access sustainable home upgrades - from solar and batteries to heat pumps and insulation. Over the last 3 years, more than $68 million in 0% interest finance has been distributed through the scheme, helping Tasmanians lower their energy bills and boost their energy independence. This success would not have been possible without our strong partnership with the Tasmanian Government, our trusted vendor network, and the dedication of our Brighte colleagues. Together, we’ve helped make sustainable energy equipment more affordable and accessible to thousands of households, and set a great example of how government and industry can collaborate to create real, lasting change. Learn more- https://lnkd.in/gPwJGMFW

Our Founder & CEO, Katherine McConnell, is joining West Tech Fest at the Perth Convention and Exhibition Centre on Tuesday 9 December at 2:45pm. In a fireside chat with Ruth Hatherley, they’ll explore how a purpose-driven fintech can power the solar economy through trusted partnerships, strong relationships and aligned values. Drawing on learnings from Silicon Valley that can be applied globally, Katherine will share how the right partnerships can unlock long-term, sustainable growth for customers, partners and communities.