- Laki Power has raised 6 million euros in a Series A financing round headed by the NATO Innovation Fund.
- NIF is making its first investment in Iceland, backing a device that generates its own power from live transmission lines.
- The startup, which has eight members, already has customers in four continents.
Óskar Valtýsson, who previously worked for Iceland’s grid operator, realised that it was difficult for engineers to power monitoring equipment in remote areas, as getting electricity to those locations was both expensive and complicated. To solve this problem, he designed a device that draws power directly from the high-voltage line it monitors.
His company, Laki Power, which he co-founded in Reykjavík in 2015 with Ósvaldur Knudsen, has just raised €6 million in Series A funding, the largest portion of which comes from the NATO Innovation Fund, with additional support from ReykVC.
Turning a grid operator’s problem into a patented solution
As Knudsen tells Tech Funding News, the story begins with his co-founder, Oscar, who worked for the Icelandic grid operator. At the time, they needed to install monitoring equipment along their transmission corridors, and power was a major problem.
Valtýsson’s solution, now patented and known as PowerGRAB, can draw up to 300 watts directly from an active line — 100 times more than ordinary inductive designs, according to Laki.
This power is used to operate cameras, weather sensors, and satellite links in remote areas without the need to replace the batteries. The company has also applied this technology to charge drones as they fly along the power corridors, enabling Laki to “build a network of drones along the grid,” Knudsen says.
When it comes to Laki’s position among European startups that are working on grid optimisation, Knudsen is confident: “We are really second to none; there is no competitor that can do it the way we do.”
Looking closely at the market, there’s LineVision, which raised $47.6 million for optical line sensors used by eight of the major US utilities, and Gridware, which installs multi-sensor hardware on utility poles following its Series B funding round.
However, neither of these companies feeds its devices directly from the line at the wattage that Laki claims. Most of them use batteries, solar power, or contact power.
Why NATO’s venture arm decided to invest
For NIF, the team’s preparation was just as important as the product.
“What impressed us was the fact that the team had been well prepared and understood both the subject matter and the market. They were willing to share their network, and this arrangement worked well,” says Dr. Sander Verbrugge, a partner at NIF.
The technology’s potential for dual use was also a major attraction: “You can use it to charge drones, fit advanced sensor systems on it and install advanced communication relay systems, all of which increase the resilience of our LP members,” Verbrugge notes.
Security concerns are well founded. Verbrugge refers to the April 2025 blackout on the Iberian Peninsula, which affected more than 50 million people for up to 18 hours and resulted in economic losses of about $1.8 billion for Spain, according to the country’s CEOE business lobby.
“Such simple and inexpensive devices can be of great assistance,” he adds.
A small team focused on scaling up
Laki currently employs eight people, the majority of whom are based in Iceland, with one employee in London.
According to Knudsen, expanding the team is a top priority, particularly in hardware, software, and sales and marketing, as the company is now moving beyond its initial test market in Iceland, the national grid operator Landsnet. The company already has customers in Australia, South America, North America, and Europe.
In 2025, the market for power grid monitoring was worth $5.8 billion and is expected to rise to $12.4 billion by 2034 as utility companies strive to modernise their outdated infrastructure while avoiding blackouts and fires.
Neither side is speeding up the process. “We are a patient kind of investor and therefore have no intention of going public in the next three years,” Verbrugge says. He adds that NIF’s ‘mission platform group’ is already working with Laki to define a possible third product line.
For Knudsen, success consists in ‘deploying our solutions on a large scale’, since grid operators are currently testing the technology. Even though Iceland has a small startup ecosystem, the nation is still producing some impressive ventures. This time, NATO is supporting the initiative.
