Today is a good day to share 6 noteworthy smart green deals which involve startups and investors in the Ecosummit community and beyond. As you know, pitching at Ecosummit is a great idea to launch and accelerate new financing rounds or promote the investment strategies and portfolios of climate tech funds. Congrats to the outstanding founders, employees and investors of Taylor, Einhundert, Ineratec, 42watt, Aira and Tibo Energy who have all been very busy and diligent building new relationships and negotiating shareholder agreements during the last months. Now the hard work continues to save our climate, decarbonise our economy and electrify our planet.
At Ecosummit Berlin 2022, Rutger van Wersch and his colleagues of APG Asset Management, a Dutch pension fund manager with €622B AUM, sat down on the famous floating terrace with Rein Westerdijk, Co-Founder of Taylor, for a long and fruitful discussion about the future of solar panels. A year later, Rein went on stage to pitch their Series A. Yesterday, Taylor announced its €8M Series A led by the ABP Dutch Energy Transition Fund, managed by APG. Seed investor Rubio Impact Ventures followed-on in the Series A. The Eindhoven-based startup develops integrated power electronics, so-called Cell String Optimisers, and software for PV panels that increase power, provide advanced insights based on cell-level data and make rooftop PV systems a lot safer. Launched in September 2022, product-market fit has been reached and 33.000 Taylor units have been shipped in the Netherlands as of June 2023.
The German startup Einhundert that provides PV, batteries, smart meters and tenant electricity to real estate property owners went all the way from the first Ecosummit pitch in 2019 to the exit in 2024. At Ecosummit Berlin 2023, Ernesto Garnier was actually launching the Series B. While many smart green VCs quickly got interested in this investment opportunity, it was Christian Scott-Mackenzie of the London-based private equity firm Arcus Infrastructure Partners (€8.3B AUM) who put the winning offer to acquire Einhundert on the table. This exit is financial and also strategic for the selling investors EWE, Triodos, Übermorgen Ventures, Kopa Ventures and High Rise Ventures as Einhundert gets integrated into the Officium platform, a German submetering provider for the housing industry acquired by Arcus in 2023.
This round is massive and badly needed by hard-to-abate industries: €118M Series B raised by Ineratec. Founded in 2016, the spinoff of the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology decarbonises aviation, shipping and the chemical industry by producing carbon neutral, synthetic e-fuels with the help of a patented power-to-liquid chemical snythesis process using CO2 and renewable electricity. Invited for a portfolio pitch by their Series A investor and Ecosummit sponsor Engie New Ventures, Tim Böltken presented at Ecosummit Berlin 2022 to accelerate their Series B. Piva Capital leads the amazing investor consortium including Planet A Ventures, High-Tech Gründerfonds, Safran Corporate Ventures, Honda, Emerald, HG Ventures, TDK Ventures, Copec Wind Ventures, RockCreek and Samsung Ventures. Ineratec plans to scale to transforming 1GW of renewable energy into 125 million gallons of sustainable fuels by 2030. That's what we call maximising your impact.
42watt facilitates the decarbonisation of existing buildings by helping their owners plan and execute the energetic renovation and insulation as well as the installation of PV sytems, batteries and heat pumps. Former VC and serial entrepreneur Jörg Überla pitched 42watt for the first time at Ecosummit Berlin 2023 where he also had an initial chat with the Eneco Ventures team. Investment Manager Jordy Klaassen then followed up to work out how to enter the cap table and add value to the growth strategy of the Munich-based startup. As a result, Eneco Ventures invested in the Seed extension joining existing investors Proptech1 Ventures, Bonventure and Contrarian Ventures.
Swedish heat pump startup Aira is also thinking big and just made headlines by announcing their incredible €145M Series B powered by Altor, Kinnevik, Temasek, Statkraft Ventures and other investors. Aira stands out as it was founded by Vargas, the super ambitious impact company builder that also built Polarium, Northvolt and H2 Green Steel from the ground up. Vargas itself was founded in 2014 and their 4 portfolio companies already raised a total of €15B in equity and debt to reach their goal of collectively decarbonising 1% of global emissions.
Finally, Eindhoven-based startup Tibo Energy just announced the successful closing of their €3M Seed round led by our friends at SET Ventures and Speedinvest. Tibo makes energy management software for commercial and industrial customers enabling them to better manage renewable energy assets in local smart grids.
