Amber eyes international market after $29 million raise

Tech-enabled energy provider Amber Electric has successfully completed a $29 million Series C capital raise with the cash injection set to accelerate its expansion in Australia and to start licensing its battery and electric vehicle (EV) automation technology to utilities internationally.

The round was led by New Zealand-headquartered software company Gentrack, with a $12 million investment. The raise also saw Netherlands-headquartered venture capital fund Rubio Impact Ventures join existing shareholders NRMA, Alberts, Square Peg, Main Sequence and the Commonwealth Bank, which nabbed a 23% stake in Amber with a $20 million investment during the Series B raise in 2021.

Melbourne-based Amber gives customers direct access to the real-time wholesale electricity price and the technology to automate smart devices in their homes, including home batteries and EVs, to use more cheap, renewable power when it’s available in the grid, and sell their excess renewable energy back to the grid.

The company said its customer base has doubled in the past six months to 30,000.

Amber co-founder and co-Chief Executive Office Dan Adams said the funds from the latest investment round will accelerate the company’s ambition of maximising and expanding the number of markets it can reach with its technology.

“We’ve received significant interest from overseas utilities to license our software,” he said. “We are now at the stage where we are ready to license our technology globally.”

Adams said the capital will be used to support Amber’s growth in Australia, to release a planned EV-to-grid automation product and to start licensing its technology to utilities internationally via a white labelling scheme through Gentrack’s utility customer network globally.

Part of the funds will be used to upgrade Gentrack’s billing and CRM system.

Gentrack Chief Executive Officer Gary Miles said Amber, which launched publicly in late 2019, is in some ways leading the transition to a two-way grid.

“Bundling Amber’s award-winning technology, which allows customers to reduce their bills, and even make money from their own electricity generation, with our seamless integrated billing and customer care platform, is a product international utilities are extremely keen to take advantage of,” he said. “It is a team and technology that we are excited to invest in and take globally.”