Instagrid Startup Announces $95 Million Series C

Energy supply is one of the biggest issues affecting how technology will evolve over time. It's a challenge that may feel closer to home when you think about batteries for things like mobile phones or electric vehicles. But it's certainly not limited to just consumer technology. A startup called Instagrid is using software to scale this mountain when it comes to enterprise-level portable chargers. It's attracting a lot of attention, selling 30,000 units of its flagship "One" product to date and growing at an annual rate of 100 per cent. Today, it announced the $95 million Series C to strengthen its growth strategy.

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Instagrid

The company said it wrote "approximately 500,000 lines of software code" to improve energy consumption from its battery, which today weighs 20 kg, measures only 42x21x42cm and can be fully charged in a few hours when plugged into a regular electrical outlet. The funding is being managed by Teacher Venture Growth (TVG), the next-stage investment arm of the Ontario Teachers' Pension Plan. Morgan Stanley Investment Management's (MSIM) 1GT climate private equity strategy was joined by previous investors Energy Impact Partners, SET Ventures, blueworld.group, Hightech Gründerfonds and Pierre-Pascal Urbon (who chairs Instagrid's advisory board).

Instagrid is based in Stuttgart, Germany's industrial centre. It had only raised around $55 million since it was founded in 2018, and this round confirmed that the startup has a healthy valuation of between $400 million and $500 million. One of the problems Instagrid is trying to solve is the environmental one. Existing old generators are above all expensive, noisy and bad for the environment. Organisations are also looking for alternatives to power their operations. Instagrid's main investor puts the number of combustible engines in the world, i.e. a more general product range, at 50 million. These also need to be replaced. The other problem Instagrid is trying to solve is controllability. These generators can be difficult to manage and control, as they are "dumb" machines that you just fill up and run. The software element of the Instagrid system essentially allows an organisation to manage its batteries like a remote fleet. You can understand where power should be used, where it can be switched off, how much power is left and more. This is the key aspect of what attracted TVG, essentially a technology investor, to the company.