AI flexibility start-up gets funding boost
Vienna-based energy trading-as-a-service company enspired has secured $8.7 million venture capital funding.
The company, which was founded in 2020, will use the funding to grow its expansion across Europe.
The funding round was co-led by Emerald Technology Ventures and 360 Capital, two companies with a record of venture capital investment in the energy transition, with other investors including i5invest, EnBW New Ventures and Helen Ventures.
enspired provides an artificial intelligence-based trading-as-a-service offering to companies for trading flexibility on Europe’s spot markets and enabling them to optimise and profit from their power portfolios.
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Spot markets have seen skyrocketing growth over the last few years but 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,” says Mario Schmoltzi, enspired CCO.
enspired’s platform is designed to eliminate entry barriers and maximise the profitability for clients to trade flexibility.
Wolfgang Eichberger, CTO, explains: “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 monetise our clients’ flexibility to the fullest while supporting the grid.”
Despite its youth, enspired’s offering is reported to have attracted considerable market interest across Europe from both asset owners and storage operators among others.
With its profit-sharing approach, there’s no upfront cost to clients, making it easy to try out.
Image: Wolfgang Eichberger (CTO; left), Juergen Mayerhofer (CEO; middle) and Mario Schmoltzi (CCO; right)
