Last time we covered the electric vehicle charging pad Ampeco in 2023, when it raised a $13 million Series A round. Today it has raised $26 million in Series B financing led by Revaia, a growth equity investment fund. That brings its total funding to $42 million.
Many EV charging systems are all-in-one solutions, which makes them quite rigid. But OEMs need to compete, as with Tesla, and at the same time differentiate themselves, which requires flexibility. Ampeco provides OEMs with a charging network that can be combined with hardware partners, allowing them to focus their resources on other customer experiences or services, for example.
The global electric vehicle market is in a tear. Electric car sales are expected to exceed 30 million by 2030. That means the world will need approximately 40 million public charging points by 2030, equivalent to an investment of 500 billion dollars in charging infrastructure.
Originally from Sofia, Bulgaria, but now with operations across Europe, Ampeco has 160 customers in 60 markets, 120,000 charging stations and clients such as EON Drive Infrastructure, ChargeGuru, Zeplug, INDIGO and EV Edge. Key markets include Western Europe, Scandinavia, the United Kingdom, North America and Southeast Asia.
So what has changed to get to this point?
Orlin Radev, CEO of AMPECO, told britcommerce that since January 2023 they had gone from 62,000 charging points to more than 120,000, while another 100,000 are on the way: “But the real story is not just in the numbers, but in who chooses us “Major utilities like EON Drive Infrastructure are running their networks in 11 European countries on our platform,” he said.
The company has now adopted an API-based approach and launched a developer portal, allowing large-scale operators to build custom solutions on top of its platform.
“Companies that initially created their own software are now migrating to our platform to manage the increasing complexity of EV charging operations,” Radev added.
But what happens if your strategy goes wrong? What is Plan B?
“The issue is not having a Plan B, but the fundamental change that is occurring in the electric vehicle charging infrastructure,” he said. “The industry is moving from fragmented local operations to sophisticated, multi-market businesses that require enterprise-grade software solutions… Our platform approach means we are not betting on any single market trend or technology.”
The electric vehicle charging market consolidated significantly last year. Traditional competitors (Driivz, GreenFlux and EVConnect) have been acquired by larger corporations (Vontier, DKV and Schneider Electric, respectively).
The other two players to watch in this space are Monta (which has raised €130 million) from Denmark and EV Energy ($87.8 million) from the United Kingdom. Monta recently partnered with Tesla for fleet charging, partnered with Emobi and announced its entry into the United States with the opening of its American headquarters in Miami.
Morgan Kessous, a partner at Revaia, said in a statement that he was attracted to Ampeco’s “customization, scalability and seamless integration with third-party systems.”
Existing investors Cavalry Ventures, BMW iVentures and Launchhub also participated in the round.