This week, Bay Area EV mobility startup ChargeLab announced it has successfully raised a $15 million Series A financing. The round was led by King River Capital, a venture capital fund that targets post-revenue, high-growth software businesses in large markets, along with ABB E-Mobility. Existing investors, including Construct Capital, Root Ventures, Highline Beta, Third Sphere, and Maple VC also extended their participation in the round.
ChargeLab builds software to operate and optimize electric vehicle charging equipment. ChargeLab’s software runs at the edge and in the cloud, empowering fleets, building operators, and utilities to deploy large numbers of EV chargers and manage them as an intelligent network. By using an API-first architecture, ChargeLab says its platform is more modular and scalable than those of its competitors.
ChargeLab does not build any hardware. Instead, the company partners with EV charger manufacturers like ABB, Phihong, United Chargers, Siemens, and Tritium. ChargeLab and these manufacturers form part of an open EV charging ecosystem driven by the Open Charge Point Protocol (OCPP).
“My partners and I have seen the power of software-first energy management solutions at scale before,” said Megan Guy, Co-Founder & Partner at King River Capital. “EV charging today is a messy and inefficient experience for consumers and enterprises alike. King River believes that ChargeLab is positioned to become the dominant back-end software provider for the EV charging industry and deliver a reliable, high-quality experience for the entirety of the ecosystem. That’s why we were thrilled to lead this round.”
“As the EV market continues to undergo massive growth, the value proposition of ChargeLab’s hardware agnostic software becomes increasingly apparent to both vendor and user,” said Malin Carlstrom, Head of Ventures at ABB EL Ventures. “We believe that Zak and his team are poised to create the Android of charging systems, and that ABB can be a strategic and financial partner, delivering significant benefits to both parties.”
“ChargeLab’s vision is to connect millions of EV chargers in the next decade,” said Zak Lefevre, co-founder and CEO of ChargeLab. “The road to achieving this goal starts today. We’re committed to making EV chargers more reliable for EV fleets and drivers.”
“We’re also making it easier for enterprises to deploy and manage EV chargers through modular software and open APIs,” added co-founder and CTO, Ehsan Mokhtari. “Our configuration tools help installers provision EV chargers in minutes instead of days, our automated monitoring makes EV charger operations a breeze, and our web app allows end-users to charge just by scanning a QR code.”
ChargeLab raised its seed round, co-led by Root Ventures and Construct Capital, in 2021. The Series A raise brings the company’s total venture financing to over $20 million. Megan Guy will be joining ChargeLab’s Board of Directors in conjunction with closing of the round.
