Fresh Checks: Axle Energy

A look into the startups that recently raised capital: the rounds, the investors, and why they said yes.

· Nik Alisha Binti Nik Shazwan · Analyst

· 3 min read

What does Axle Energy do?

Axle Energy acts as a broker and aggregator in wholesale electricity and ‘flexibility’ markets, connecting household devices like solar batteries, EV chargers and heat pumps to energy markets. It acts as a virtual power grid, managing household energy usage during supply fluctuations and earning homeowners cash.

What made them tick for investors?

Energize Capital

Fund Thesis and Product Fit

Energize Capital are investors in software and digital solutions focused in climate and energy, and have “long held conviction in virtual power plants as a smarter way to affordably and sustainably increase grid capacity”. Axle Energy’s product offering squarely fits within their thesis.

Full-Stack Product Offering

Axle Energy’s system handles every aspect of participating in the energy value market, from connecting and aggregating devices and managing power usage during fluctuations to settling payments for users. This enables customers to unlock new means of income without any hassle.

Founder-Market Fit

CEO Karl Bach is a former energy retailer and witnessed first-hand how companies are impacted by unpredictable wholesale prices of volatile energy markets, and CTO Archy de Berker formerly led product and analytics at CarbonChain, thus making them the perfect pairing to tackle the challenge of balancing modern electricity grids.

Proven Commercial Scale and Value to End-Users

As of investment, Axle Energy manages over 300,000 assets in their grid - adding up to over 2 GW of flexible capacity. Participating households are collecting an average £10 per month as part of the programme.

Accel

An Infrasturture/Coordination Solution

Accel is less explicitly a climate-specialist investor, unlike Energize Capital. Their interest in Axle Energy lies in the intersection of three separate trends: rising energy demand, increased variation in supply and consumers, operators and businesses are looking to lower costs. Axle provides the perfect layer of coordination to utilise already existing infrastructure and gearing it to tackle these three needs.

Speed and Savings as the Edge Over New Infrastructure

Rather than spending time and money rebuilding new infrastructure around ever-changing demand patterns, existing devices and assets that are already connected to the grid can be leveraged to respond.

The Perfect Team: Deep Experise and Proof of Execution

Accel explicitly stated “the combination of energy market expertise, engineering brilliance, and product ambition” is what made Axle Energy’s team stand out. This is also combined with their proven track record: over 300,000+ connected assets, more than 2GW of flexible capacity generated, and over a million pounds earned by users. This is solid evidence of their product-market fit and the scale of future opportunity.