Emerald helping to boost grid flexibility across Europe with enspired investment

Emerald Ventures, a pioneer in industrial technology venture capital, announced Thursday that it joined a $8.7 million seed round in Austrian energy trading company enspired. The infusion adds to the startup’s momentum in solving a key challenge in the energy transition by making power grids more flexible, thereby helping to prevent blackouts. It will further accelerate the company’s expansion across Europe just 18 months after its inception. The funding round was co-led by Emerald Technology Ventures and 360 Capital, with corporate VC investors EnBW New Ventures and Helen Ventures joining the syndicate alongside existing investor i5invest.

Founded in 2020, enspired’s mission is to enable a full transition to clean energy by providing power grids with much-needed flexibility. The firm’s founders bring decades of experience in the energy industry to the fully digital trading-as-a-service (TaaS) company. enspired commercially optimizes power generation, storage and consumption assets on so-called “spot markets”—short-term power exchanges that help to balance supply and demand.

“Building new wind and solar parks is only one part of the energy transition equation,” says Juergen Mayerhofer, enspired’s CEO. “Power grids need to be balanced between generation and consumption at all times, and the increasing share of renewables in the mix leads to generation that fluctuates with weather and can rarely be predicted in advance with great accuracy.”

enspired helps address this dilemma via its easy-to-use TaaS platform, which not only eliminates entry barriers but promises the most profitable way for its clients to trade flexibility. At enspired, all trades get executed in a fully automated fashion using advanced AI-based algorithms that outperform the market.

“enspired’s profit-sharing model means there’s no upfront cost to clients, making it easy to try out. This innovative service design is an incredibly exciting new way to tackle the green energy transition as we search for the best pathways toward net zero,” says Hans Dellenbach, partner at Emerald Technology Ventures.

About Emerald Technology Ventures

Emerald is a globally recognized venture capital firm founded in 2000, that manages and advises assets of over €1 billion from its offices in Zurich, Toronto and Singapore. The firm invests in start-ups that tackle big challenges in climate change and sustainability, with 4 current funds, hundreds of venture transactions and four third-party investment mandates, including loan guarantees to over 100 start-ups.

This is Emerald.

Bold Ideas. Bright Future.  www.emerald.vc

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About enspired

enspired is a fully digital energy trading-as-a-service company headquartered in Vienna. We drive the energy transition by enabling our clients to bring flexible assets to power spot markets and capture their full value with our AI-based trading services. Our team consists of leading algorithmic traders, data scientists and technology enthusiasts who firmly believe that the way power is traded will soon change drastically—in our world, there is no room for trading screens and traditional optimization. www.enspired-trading.com