Finland-based electric vehicle (EV) charging platforms Virta Ltd, a portfolio company of Singapore based Venture Capital firm Vertex Holdings, has secured new €85 million ($93.33 million) growth funding.
Virta said in a statement on Tuesday that the sum consists of €65 million ($71.37 million) equity investment from Virta’s existing investors, led by the private equity firm, Jolt Capital, and co-invested by Future Energy Ventures backed by E.ON., Helen Ventures, Vertex Growth Fund, Finnish Industry Investment, Lahti Energy, Vantaa Energy, and Kotka Energy.
Meanwhile, €20 million will be received from Business Finland, which offers innovation funding for companies and research organizations.
With the fresh funding, Virta aims to grow its charging transactions by more than fivefold in Europe and the Asia-Pacific (APAC) region by 2025.
According to the statement, over 1 000 professional EV charging businesses in 35 countries run their EV charging services on Virta platform.
Together, these charging network operators constitute one of the biggest public networks in Europe.
Including roaming, the network enables EV drivers with access to over 350, 000 charging points.
“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 Chief Executive Officer Jussi Palola.
It is noted that Virta’s growth has continuously surpassed the industry average, and in 2022, Virta Group’s annual revenue grew 112 percent to €39 million ($42.82 million).
Virta said EVs are big batteries on wheels, and by 2030, the firm estimates it will represent up to 90 percent of the total battery storage capacity in Europe.
It said that connecting this battery capacity to the energy system and adjusting EV charging consumption in real-time (demand-side flexibility) are seen as one of the biggest enablers for the world to successfully multiply the share of renewable energy production, lower the cost of electricity for consumers, and increase the energy system resilience.
Cited a recent Smarten report, it said full scale implementation of demand-side flexibility, including EV charging, will save up to €254.4 billion ($279.32 billion) in grid infrastructure and peak power plant investments between 2023 and 2030, and 300 million tonnes in GHG emissions by 2030.
In total, full deployment of demand-side flexibility could lead to a potential cost reduction for consumers of more than €71 billion ($77.95 billion) per year on electric consumption by 2030.
“Today, Virta has one of the leading platform patent portfolios with focus on energy technologies such as vehicle-to-grid (V2G), autonomous vehicle charging, and operating complex billion-scale network operations,
“With the new funding, we are now ready to take the global lead in making EVs an integral part of energy flexibility markets,” said Palola.
In the process, the Virta platform capacity is estimated to grow from the current ca. 2,000 MW to 12,000-15,000 MW, the size of 10 large nuclear power plants, by the end of 2025.
“Our strategy is to fund European growth deep-tech companies looking for a worldwide leadership. Virta has demonstrated a rare ability to combine hypergrowth, technology leadership and mature operations, enabling sustainable profitable scalability,
“We believe that Virta is now in pole position to win the race to platform market leadership in one of the fastest growing global industry sectors, ie EV charging and energy flexibility,” said Jolt Capital’s Chief Executive Officer Jean Schmitt.
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