Helsinki-based Virta has recently secured €85M in growth funding, making it one of the biggest funding rounds in the industry in recent years. Of the total sum, €65M was provided as an equity investment by Virta’s existing investors, led by Jolt Capital, and co-invested by Future Energy Ventures backed by E.ON., Helen Ventures, Vertex Growth Fund, Finnish Industry Investment, Lahti Energia Oy, Vantaan Energia Oy, and Kotkan Energia Oy, while €20M came from Business Finland, which provides innovation funding for companies and research organizations. Virta’s EV charging platform is currently used by over 1,000 professional charging businesses across 35 countries, comprising one of the largest public networks in Europe with access to more than 350,000 charging points. With the new funding, Virta aims to increase its charging transactions by more than five times in Europe and the Asia-Pacific region by 2025.
“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,” says Virta CEO Jussi Palola.
EVs are big batteries on wheels, and by 2030, Virta estimates they will represent up to 90% of the total battery storage capacity in Europe. 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.
According to a recent Smarten report(2), full-scale implementation of demand-side flexibility, including EV charging, will save up to €254.4B 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 €71B per year on electric consumption by 2030.
“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. With the new funding, we are now ready to take the global lead in making EVs an integral part of energy flexibility markets,” says 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.
The funding round’s lead investor, Jolt Capital’s CEO Jean Schmitt, summarises the expectations and potential from the investor point-of-view:
“Our strategy is to fund European growth deep-tech companies looking for 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, i.e. EV charging and energy flexibility.”
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