Louvain-la-Neuve, Belgium-based e-peas, a fabless semiconductor company that develops ultra-low power management for energy harvesting, announced on Wednesday that it has secured €17.5M in a new funding round led by Otium Capital.
New investors Nomainvest and EIC Fund, and existing investors KBC Focus Fund, The Faktory, Wallonie Entreprendre, Noshaq-Leansquare, and Start.Invest, participated in the funding round.
The latest funding round will help e-peas to accelerate the commercial development of its Ambient Energy Management (AEM) products and expand its product portfolio.
e-peas: Helping businesses create battery-free products
Sustainability has become an important focus for electronic vendors, who are looking for ways to reduce their carbon footprint and use rare earth materials.
Founded by Geoffroy Gosset and Julien De Vos, e-peas develops ultra-low-power circuits such as energy harvester interfaces and microcontrollers to make IoT devices more energy-efficient and longer-lasting.
The company has pioneered energy harvesting technologies that gather ambient energy such as light, radio frequency, temperature gradient, or vibration, removing the need for battery replacement and reducing C02 impact.
e-peas’s products increase the amount of harvested energy and drastically reduce the energy consumption of all power-consuming blocks within wireless sensor nodes.
Currently, the company’s energy harvesting has already been adopted in multiple products, such as TV remote controls, smart home devices, electronic shelf labels, wearables, and industrial sensors.
Additionally, it is being considered for several other applications where energy efficiency is crucial.
The investor
Otium Capita is a family office, managing the assets of founder Pierre-Edouard Stérin.
With over €1.6B in Assets Under Management, Otium invests at all stages of development, from Seed and Series A to Growth and Buy & Build projects, in various fields, from venture tech and consumer to industry and real estate.
Pierre Menard of Otium Capital says, “e-peas revolutionary innovation is poised to address the booming energy harvesting market.”
Nomainvest is a Belgian multi-family investment company with a strong focus on private equity investments (venture capital, growth capital, and buyouts) in Belgium, Germany, France, Luxembourg, and the Netherlands.
The firm focuses on ambitious companies with innovative growth projects in sectors such as sustainable construction and housing, environment, climate and sustainable energy, mobility, and healthcare and demographics.
Philippe Niessen from Nomainvest adds, “A disruptive technology solving a sustainability issue convinced us to support Geoffroy, Julien, and their team.”
The European Innovation Council Fund from the European Commission is agnostic: it invests across all technologies and verticals and all EU countries and countries associated with Horizon Europe.
It provides the investment component of the EIC Accelerator blended finance.
The EIC Fund provides financing to companies developing disruptive technologies, bridging them with investors, and building a large network of co-investors and strategic partners to share risk and increase their chances of success.
Svetoslava Georgieva, Chair of the EIC Fund Board, says, “The EIC Fund has established itself as a strong force in EU deep-tech investments, and we are very happy to support e-peas, leading the way towards energy efficiency in electronic devices. Their groundbreaking technology allows for carbon footprint reduction and is very much aligned with EU’s Green Deal objectives, and also new regulations like Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD).”
Read the orginal article: https://siliconcanals.com/news/startups/belgian-startup-e-peas-raises-17-5m/
