Berlin-based climate tech startup Swobbee has raised €2 million of debt and equity financing in an extension of a preceding Series A Round. The round is backed by Dutch Stichting Clean Future Dividend Fund and Polish SpeedUp Energy Innovation, the fund told AIN.Capital.
- Founded in 2017 as GreenPack and pivoted to Swobbee in 2020, the startup developed a solution based on integrated hardware and software to offer battery swapping stations for electric vehicles. The solution leverages usability of light electric vehicles by reducing the vehicle’s downtime due to the need to charge the batteries. This allows to increase the profitability of most of the shared micromobility players.
- So far, Swobbee is already operating stations in Germany, Poland, the Netherlands, Spain, and Portugal.
“Each of our stations is equipped with 8 to 30 battery slots. We currently offer charging infrastructure for 8 (soon 10) types of batteries, which, in Europe, allows us to be compatible with about 70% of current light electric vehicles, or so-called LEVs, used by players in the shared micromobility as well as last-mile-delivery sectors,”
Thomas Duscha, CEO and co-founder of Swobbee, describes the solution.
- The Polish SpeedUp Energy Innovation fund and the Dutch Stichting Clean Future Dividend Fund have joined an extended Round A. During it, the company was previously backed by EIT InnoEnergy among other investors.
- The SpeedUp Energy Innovation fund belongs to the SpeedUp Group, a group of venture capital firms that invests in companies at the early stages of development. The fund invests in deeptech startups concerned with ML, AI, and picture recognition, providing tickets ranging from €50,000 to €4 million. In April 2023, the fund backed another Dutch startup Bringly.
“Swobbee, in our opinion, is likely to become one of the key beneficiaries of technological advances in the micromobility area. What’s more, we predict that the use of micromobility devices will amount to up to 15% of all short-distance trips, with a range of up to 8 kilometers. This is just one of the market figures that leads us to believe in the enormous potential facing the Swobbee team,”
Bartłomiej Gola, General Partner of SpeedUp Energy Innovation, comments.
- The team plans to use the funds raised to further develop its platform and, most importantly, to expand its network of stations in Germany, and also enter Eastern European and Southeast Asian markets in the upcoming months and years.
