- 16
- January
2023
Aerones raises $30M Series A led by Lightrock and Haniel
We love this startup since we got to know it in April 2021. Applying the power of robotics to make the wind industry more efficient is a great idea. Our ecoportfolio company Aerones raises $30M Series A led by Lightrock and Haniel with participation of new investor Blume Equity. Aerones is based in Riga (Latvia), develops and manufactures a family of smart robots and provides their robot-enabled services for the maintenance of wind turbines with a team of 200 employees to more than 100 customers in 20 countries including Vestas, GE, Siemens Gamesa, NextEra and Enel. The goal is to minimise downtime when wind turbines are inspected, cleaned, coated or repaired. In fact, Aerones’ services are 6 times faster, 40% more efficient and a lot safer for humans that don’t need to climb up wind turbines because the robots do. This enables huge cost savings in the $30B wind turbine maintenance market that is forecasted to grow to $50B by 2028.
Read more- 11
- August
2013
Markus Leuenberger pitches the Dutch cleantech institute ECN
Ecosummit TV: Markus Leuenberger pitches ECN at ECO13 Berlin. The Dutch research institute is based in a beautiful location in the dunes north of Amsterdam. 550 researchers and experts develop new green technologies with a strong focus on renewable energy and energy storage including Power to Gas. Recently, ECN launched a new technical due diligence service for cleantech VCs across Europe. This makes a lot of sense as many cleantech VCs don’t have sufficient inhouse competence in each of the many cross-industry cleantech markets. Moreover, the cleantech institute also helps startups during product development. A small version of Fraunhofer in Germany, ECN looks like they are equally smart and very entrepreneurial. If you need deep cleantech technology expertise, go and talk to ECN.
Read more- 20
- May
2013
Smart green dealflow: Ubitricity, Saperatec, Skeleton, Waste2Chemical, O-Flexx and Romo Wind
Financing cleantech startups is a tough game these days. You need a strong team, product market fit and, even better, customers and revenues. In this difficult market environment, it is a great pleasure to report that 6 smart green startups managed to raise new venture capital: Ubitricity (around €3.5M, Germany), Saperatec (€3.3M, Germany), Skeleton (€2.2M, Estonia), Waste2Chemical (undisclosed, Netherlands), O-Flexx (€2.4M, Germany) and Romo Wind (€4.8M, Switzerland). The active cleantech VCs include Earlybird, IBB, NRW Bank, HTGF, eCapital, Dutch Greentech Fund, Emerald, Yellow&Blue, ABB and b-to-v. Let’s take a closer look at the startups and their new investors.
Read more- 10
- May
2013
Martin Riedel pitches the small wind startup Enbreeze
Ecosummit TV: Decentralised local energy production is a key trend in the Energiewende. While small PV systems are already widespread, small wind is a new market with large potential growing at 30% CAGR. The advantage of small wind is that the wind also blows during the night and on cloudy days. At ECO12 Düsseldorf, Martin Riedel pitches the German early stage cleantech startup Enbreeze that develops small wind turbines.
Read more- 9
- May
2013
Guido Luetsch pitches NTS and its high-altitude wind technology
Ecosummit TV: “Fish don’t need electricity,” says Aloys Wobben of Enercon. While offshore there is more wind, there is also less demand. As Guido Luetsch explains in his pitch, the German startup NTS tackles this problem by going to an altitude of 500m onshore in order to harvest stronger winds. NTS has got a running prototype in which high-altitude kites are steered by robots sitting on a straight track system on the ground. NTS is backed by 3M and wants to raise €5M from new investors for the closed loop pilot system. Moreover, NTS is partner of Autodesk’s cleantech programme using their software to design the steering robots and track system.
Read more- 6
- May
2013
Jörg Fabri analyses wind energy and recommends operational excellence
Ecosummit TV: The Energiewende, i.e. the transformation to a smart green energy system, is a massive challenge for the energy industry and the government. Globally, renewable energy attracts $200B investment per year to which wind energy contributes one third. In his talk at ECO12 Düsseldorf, Joerg Fabri of allocate, analyses how we can keep up the pace in the European wind energy sector if the level of subsidies further decreases.
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