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- August
2021
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 more- 10
- August
2021
Wirelane 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 more- 2
- November
2016
Relayr 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 more- 13
- October
2013
Oliver Luenstedt pitches Carzapp from Berlin
Ecosummit TV: Oliver Lünstedt pitches Carzapp at ECO13 Berlin. While there are now 4 p2p car sharing startups in the German market, Carzapp is the first one to have developed their own hardware solution called ZappKit. The ZappKit enables wireless car access with smartphones used as digital keys. The magic hardware box also includes GPS and an immobiliser that prevents theft. While Carzapp is about to start their beta test in Berlin, they also offer their ZappKit to companies with significant car fleets they want to share. The B2B business of Carzapp is bound to grow quickly as the ZappKit is pretty price competitive. Carzapp is backed by angels and raised €250K in a crowdfunding round on Seedmatch earlier this year. Now Carzapp looks for fresh money to accelerate its growth. Meet Oliver at ECO13 London to get an update and talk smart green business.
Read more- 11
- October
2013
Knut Hechtfischer pitches Ubitricity
Ecosummit TV: Knut Hechtfischer pitches Ubitricity at ECO13 Berlin. The Berlin-based cleantech startup develops a cost-efficient charging solution for electric vehicles by putting the intelligence into the charging cable. This allows mobile metering wherever the user wants to buy electricity from. Recently, they became famous for integrating their solution in street lights. Up to now, Ubitricity raised €5.4M and is backed by Earlybird, IBB Beteiligungsgesellschaft and Heinz Dürr (largest shareholder of Dürr, former CEO of AEG and Deutsche Bahn). Founded in 2008, Ubitricity plans to launch Mobile Metering in 2014, just-in-time when new electric cars hit the market. Meet Knut at ECO13 London next week to get an update and learn about their high risk, high return investment opportunity. That’s what venture capital is all about, isn’t it?
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