Based in Helsinki, Capalo AI has secured a €3.8 million seed round to expand its AI-driven virtual power plant, optimizing energy storage for a resilient and cost-effective green transition. Led by VentureFriends and PROfounders, with support from Inventure and Innovestor, the funding will fuel European expansion and scale Capalo’s battery asset management platform. By aggregating battery storage systems into a single AI-powered network, Capalo AI enables efficient energy trading and grid balancing, addressing the volatility of renewables. The company, already managing hundreds of megawatts of capacity, counts major infrastructure investors and energy firms like Taaleri Energia and MW Storage among its clients.
Capalo AI’s virtual power plant optimizes energy storage systems to accelerate the transition to renewable energy. Power grids face challenges managing the rapid growth of weather-dependent energy sources like wind and solar power. This variability makes energy supply less predictable and drives up costs and volatility for power grids. As renewable energy adoption grows worldwide, there is a growing need for energy storage solutions that can balance electricity supply and demand at all times. As a result, infrastructure investors have increasingly recognized battery energy storage systems as an attractive asset class due to their ability to earn from various grid balancing mechanisms.
“Battery energy storage systems are essential for driving the transition to clean energy and maintaining a resilient electricity grid. However, the battery hardware alone cannot provide the needed value for the energy system or its owner; you need to intelligently orchestrate all this capacity together to maximize its impact. We’re proud to drive the energy transition forward with our virtual power plant,” says Henri Taskinen, Co-founder and CEO of Capalo AI.
Capalo AI connects batteries from various locations into a large virtual battery – a virtual power plant Zeus VPP. This virtual power plant optimizes and orchestrates the usage of large-scale battery assets to maximize both their impact on the electricity grid and their value for battery owners. Through advanced AI and precise forecasting, the virtual power plant helps power grids respond to fluctuations in production and demand while allowing battery owners to maximize profits by trading stored energy and battery capacity across electricity markets. This pooling approach creates powerful network effects – as more participants join, the system’s ability to distribute flexibility improves, delivering better output for the grid and greater value for all battery owners.
The grid-scale energy storage market is experiencing remarkable growth, with approximately 70% year-over-year growth in installations (Rho Motion 2024). In Finland alone, Finland’s transmission system operator Fingrid reported a massive 18GW in grid connection inquiries for battery energy storage systems last year. For contrast, Finland’s largest nuclear power plant, Olkiluoto 3, has a maximum power output of 1.6GW.
Capalo AI has quickly emerged as Finland’s market-leading trader and optimizer for battery assets, managing hundreds of megawatts of capacity under contract. With its new €3.8 million funding, Capalo AI plans to accelerate its European expansion and grow its client portfolio, which already includes major infrastructure investors and independent power producers like Taaleri Energia, Ardian’s Nordic operating partner eNordic, and Swiss battery energy storage system investor MW Storage. The company also recently announced a major partnership in Sweden with Å Entelios, one of the largest Nordic utility companies.
“Battery Energy Storage Systems will play a key role in the transition to clean energy since they are the most cost-effective and multi-functional tool for grid balancing. This is still a nascent space, and we were impressed by the team’s commercial traction across different countries. We are excited to partner and support Henri and the Capalo team, who have a deep understanding of the space and the ambition to build a global company. This is the latest of a series of investments in the broader space and geography and we couldn’t be happier about it,” says George Dimopoulos, Partner at VentureFriends.
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Read the orginal article: https://arcticstartup.com/capalo-ai-raises-e3-8-million-seed/
