Virta scores €85 mn in growth funding from existing investors
Finnish Virta has received €85 mn in growth funding from existing investors like E.On to expand its charging platform and V2G technology. The company expects to grow fivefold in Europe and Asia over the next two years.
Apart from E.On, Helen Ventures, Vertex Growth Fund, Finnish Industry Investment, Lahti Energy, Vantaa Energy, Jolt Capital, and Kotka Energy have made €65 mn available. Virta will also receive €20 mn from Business Finland, which offers innovation funding for companies and research organisations.
“The EV charging platform is mission critical for companies building global charging services. Our strong financial position enables us to secure the best growth capabilities for our partners,” said Virta CEO Jussi Palola.
Virta claims over 1 000 businesses in 35 countries run their EV charging services on its platform. “Together, these charging network operators constitute one of the biggest public networks in Europe,” which counts over 350 000 charging points when including roaming. Virta’s direct customers operate over 75,000 chargers in 35 countries, forming the ‘Powered by Virta’ network.
With the fresh funding, Virta aims to grow its charging transactions by more than fivefold in Europe and the Asia-Pacific region by 2025. In the process, the Finnish company and its backers believe that EV batteries on the platform could hold 12,000-15,000 MW of energy by 2025, equivalent to ten nuclear power plants, according to Virta. The current platform capacity is about 2,000 MW. These numbers rely on the company’s estimate that EV batteries will represent up to 90% of Europe’s total battery storage capacity by 2030. Connecting this battery capacity to the grids and adjusting EV charging consumption in real-time are seen as one of the biggest enablers for the renewable energy transition.
“Today, Virta has one of the leading platform patent portfolios with a focus on energy technologies such as vehicle-to-grid (V2G), autonomous vehicle charging, and operating complex billion-scale network operations,” said CEO Palola. “With the new funding, we are now ready to take the global lead in making EVs an integral part of energy flexibility markets.”
Jolt Capital’s CEO, Jean Schmitt, added Virta had demonstrated “a rare ability to combine hypergrowth, technology leadership and mature operations, enabling sustainable, profitable scalability”.
Virta’s annual revenue grew 112% to €39 mn in 2022 (preliminary figures). The company was ranked on the Financial Times 1000 Europe’s Fastest Growing Companies list for the fourth time in 2023.
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