Alantra’s new Klima fund invests in Mainspring
Smart green energy startups in Europe raising Series B or later rounds now have one more financial VC to go to in Madrid. The new late stage VC fund is called Klima (climate in German), focuses on hardware and software startups accelerating the energy transition and achieved its first closing at €80M on 7 June 2021. Klima’s capital is committed by powerful Spanish LPs including the listed investment bank and asset manager Alantra (€18M commitment), the gas corporate Enagás (€30M), the state-owned bank Instituto de Crédito Oficial (€15M), the renewable energy developer Capital Energy (€2M), the German family office Blueworld Group and other undisclosed institutional investors. On 12 July 2021, Klima announced its first investment in Sillicon Valley-based Mainspring, expanding their $95M Series D to $108M together with other investors entering the massive round at the last minute. GP Lucille Bonnet will pitch Klima at Ecosummit Berlin 8-9 September 2021.
Read moreWirelane raises €18M Series B led by Abacon Capital
Ubiquitous electric mobility and EV charging play an important role to save our climate and planet and this is the decisive decade to limit global warming to 1.5°C. By 2030, Transport & Environment’s Road2Zero scenario forecasts a need for 2.9 million public EV chargers in the EU. Just-in-time, Wirelane raises €18M Series B (€12.1M fresh capital and €5.9M converted loans) to accelerate its growth and contribute to rolling out more EV charging stations. The B round is led by Abacon Capital, the investment arm of the Büll family office in Hamburg. Early investors in Wirelane include Vito Ventures, HTGF and Coparion. Founded in 2016, Wirelane employs 40 emobility experts in Munich and Berlin and targets €5M+ revenues in 2021. Among the B2B customers are BMW and Vattenfall.
Read moreEpilot raises Series A from Enercity after meeting at Ecosummit
At Ecosummit deals get done. We saw the need for bringing new climate tech to the global market a long time ago. Thus we already have 10 years track record of matching smart green startups with investors. Here’s one more success story about a fast growing energy e-commerce startup and a transforming city utility that met for the first time at Ecosummit Berlin 2019 to explore common ground with the help of coffee. Good deals take time. 9 months later, on 11 February 2020, Epilot announced at E-world the closing of its Series A in which Enercity invests a significant but undisclosed amount of growth capital to buy a 25,1% stake in Epilot’s cap table. After finishing our startup tour running around Germany’s leading energy trade fair, we joined Epilot’s lively stand party to celebrate the deal closing, interview the co-founders and enjoy a few Kölsch together.
Read moreRelayr raises $23M Series B from Munich RE/HSB Ventures, KPCB and Munich Venture Partners
The Internet of Things, Industry 4.0 and the insurance industry are coming together. Berlin-based IoT startup Relayr raises $23M (€20.7M) Series B from Munich RE/HSB Ventures, KPCB and Munich Venture Partners. It turns out that the industrial insurance company Hartford Steam Boiler (HSB), since 2009 part of Munich RE, has started to embrace IoT a while ago to make their life easier and insurance business smarter. In a nutshell, HSB insures manufacturing companies against the risk of equipment breakdown and other reasons for suboptimal factory performance. By making the machines smart and connecting them to the Relayr cloud, their health status can be monitored online. If the automated machine data analysis identifies any problems, the malfunctioning machines can be repaired or replaced before it is too late and the production line has to be put on hold without knowing why.
Read moreBenjamin Kott pitches EnergyDeck
Ecosummit TV: Benjamin Kott, who used to manage green operations for Google in Europe, pitches EnergyDeck at ECO13 London. 40% of total energy is consumed by buildings and up to 30% of consumption is typically wasted. Moreover, 80% of today’s buildings will exist in 2050. This translates into £8B annual savings potential in the UK alone from increasing commercial building efficiency by 20%. EnergyDeck is an online platform for community-based resource tracking and building performance benchmarking and it includes a best practice database. Benjamin’s ultimate vision is a supplier marketplace that aggregates the best solutions in the market for optimising building efficiency. EnergyDeck is a young startup based in London that is backed by angels and public grants. Now EnergyDeck is fundraising again and invites investors who love software, buildings and energy efficiency and are able to add value on top of providing capital.
Read moreMarkus Becker pitches sustainability software startup EcoIntense
Ecosummit TV: Markus Becker pitches EcoIntense at Ecosummit Düsseldorf 2012. The Berlin-based smart green startup develops sophisticated software for health, security and environmental management (HSE). EcoIntense was founded in 2007, has got 35 employees, doubled its revenues 2 years in a row and now enjoys profitability. EcoIntense’s customer list is really impressive and features Siemens that uses EcoWebDesk in 3 of their 4 business units. Having reached so many milestones, Markus is interested in talking to late stage financial or corporate VCs that can add strategic value.
Read moreErwin Burth Presents Autodesk Cleantech Partner Programme At ECO12 Berlin
Ecosummit TV: Erwin Burth manages business development for Autodesk in Europe in the cleantech industry. Autodesk was founded 30 years ago, is a public company with a market cap of $8.2B and plays a pivotal role in the Smart Green Economy when it comes to designing smart green products. At ECO12, Erwin presents Autodesk’s design philosophy and its powerful design software solutions for the physical world. Autodesk believes that all problems can be solved with the help of intelligent design. In fact, that’s exactly what every cleantech startup building hardware needs. Autodesk is a very generous corporate and offers free software with a value of up to €120K to cleantech startups. Many Ecosummit startups are already a member of the Autodesk Cleantech Partner Programme such as Smart Hydro Power that won the Ecosummit Jury Award 2012. I strongly recommend that you apply asap.
Read more