Helen Ventures has closed an investment into Vienna-based startup enspired GmbH. Energy trading-as-a-service company enspired has closed a new landmark fundraising round that will accelerate the start-up’s expansion across Europe just 18 months after its inception. The USD 8.7M round, co-led by Emerald Technology Ventures and 360 Capital – two leading venture capital firms investing in technology that supports the energy transition – will help enspired solve a key challenge in the energy transition by making power grids more flexible. Corporate venture capital investors EnBW New Ventures and Helen Ventures are joining the syndicate together with co-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 minds behind enspired – Juergen Mayerhofer (CEO), Wolfgang Eichberger (CTO) and Mario Schmoltzi (CCO) – bring decades of experience in the energy industry to the fully digital trading-as-a-service (TaaS) company, using Artificial Intelligence to advance from traditional trading. 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.
“We find enspired a very interesting and rapidly growing company in the field of digital energy. Fast adoption of renewable energy will only increase the need for short term electricity trading, and new tools are needed to support this trend”, Terhi Vapola, VP of Helen Ventures, comments the investment.
Mayerhofer explains: “Building new wind and solar parks is only one part of the energy transition equation. Power grids need to be balanced between generation and consumption at all times, and the increasing share of renewables leads to generation that fluctuates with weather and can rarely be predicted in advance with great accuracy. To prevent blackouts, deviations in generation and consumption can be traded on power exchanges, sparing the grid operator from having to take last-minute action.”
Spot markets have seen skyrocketing growth over the last few years yet are difficult to understand and hard to enter for most players. “Trading on a short-term energy exchange requires hard-to-find trading talent, a 24/7 shift setup and access to the market. That alone is a big enough hurdle for most players not to bring their flexibility to the exchange”, adds Schmoltzi.
enspired’s TaaS platform not only eliminates entry barriers but promises the most profitable way for its clients to trade flexibility. Eichberger explains the technical edge: “At enspired, all trades get executed in a fully automated fashion using advanced AI-based algorithms that outperform the market. We’re leveraging all available data, taking and executing trading decisions in milliseconds to monetize our clients’ flexibility to the fullest while supporting the grid.”
This setup has sparked interest from asset owners, storage operators and demand-side resources alike, and enspired has seen tremendous market interest. enspired’s trading-as-a-service platform has already been adopted by a handful of international energy companies and traders and the goal is now to expand its adoption throughout Europe.
Terhi Vapola
Vice President, Helen Ventures
terhi@helenventures.fi, +358 40 803 6407
Maximiliane Resch
maximiliane.resch@enspired-trading.com
