Monta, an EV charging management platform, secured €30 million (~$30 million) at a €155 million (~$155 million) valuation as a part of the Series A+ funding round led by Energize Ventures with participation from returning investors Creandum, Pale Blue Dot, byFounders, and Headline.
The company intends to use the investment to expand to North America.
For EV drivers, Monta offers reservation, virtual queuing, and payment features under one platform and access to public charge points. They have partnered with hardware manufacturers to launch their Powered by Monta (PBM) program in multiple markets.
Monta expects to broaden its product development to include grid management services to combat the challenges that occur as more EVs hit the roads.
Ultimately, the company expects to facilitate the sale of excess power back to the grid (V2G), manage interoperability with other zero-carbon technologies (V2H, V2X), and aid in creating local energy markets.
In 2021 European EV sales increased by more than 65% compared to 2020, but the lack of EV charging infrastructure is still one of the biggest hurdles to mass adoption. Not only do nearly 3,000 new public charge points need to be built each week for Europe to reach its target of operating one million charge points by 2025.
“We are aiming to fully digitalize the EV ecosystem to tackle all the immediate challenges within the industry and build toward a more transparent and flexible future. By partnering with hardware OEMs we can deliver new features straight out of the box, like our new feature that allows operators to set a percentage on top of the spot price in order to follow the market fluctuations and automatically offer a fair price for charging,” says Casper Rasmussen, Monta CEO. “The investment from Energize and our returning investors is a strong vote of confidence in our vision, team, and software as the cornerstone of the mobility infrastructure of the future.”
The latest financing brings Monta’s total to €50 million (~$50 million).
“The market penetration of electric vehicles is climbing sharply as economic, regulatory, and climate levers accelerate EV adoption – and deployment of charging infrastructure has to keep pace. We expect more than 1.6 million public chargers and 20 million private charging stations to be deployed in the U.S. and Europe by 2025,” said Juan Muldoon, Partner at Energize Ventures.
According to Mercom’s 1H and Q2 2022 Funding and M&A Report for Storage, Grid & Efficiency, VC funding in Smart Grid companies in 1H 2022 was 58% higher with $731 million compared to the $463 million raised in 1H 2021. Earlier this year, ChargePoint, a provider of an open electric vehicle charging network, announced that Antara Capital would invest $300 million in the company by purchasing convertible senior notes to accelerate the company’s growth.
