Amperesand, a grid infrastructure solutions provider, announced its $12.45 million Seed financing co-led by Xora Innovation, an early-stage investment platform of Temasek, and Material Impact. They are joined by TDK Ventures, the venture arm of TDK Corporation, and Foothill Ventures.
The company specializes in solid-state transformers (SST) for applications in multi-megawatt DC fast charging for electric vehicles, microgrids, and data centers. The Seed funding will enable Amperesand to industrialize and manufacture its technology at scale while building its executive team. The company aims to deliver its commercial systems to a global customer base, with the first delivery of systems in the U.S. and Singapore planned for 2025.
“We see the modernization of the electrical infrastructure as a key mission-critical societal event. For that to happen, novel power electronics like the SST developed by the team at Amperesand are needed to enable the future of highly efficient smart grids, while providing significant advantages to existing infrastructure as well,” said Christian Theriault, Partner at Material Impact.
“Over 7 years ago, Anshuman and leaders from Singapore’s research ecosystem had the foresight to project the evolution of silicon carbide technology, and the rapidly evolving requirements of power grids, leading to the creation of a highly ambitious solid state transformer research program at NTU. The time for commercialization of SSTs is now right from both a technology and market readiness perspective, and we are excited to partner with the founding team we consider to be in pole position,” said Phil Inagaki, Managing Director at Xora Innovation.
According to Mercom’s Annual and Q4 2023 Funding and M&A Report for Storage & Smart Grid. VC funding in the Smart Grid sector decreased 55% YoY, with $1.5 billion in 47 deals in 2023 compared to $3.3 billion in 46 deals in 2022.
