Europe’s energy crisis is real with rising and increasingly volatile energy prices. While electricity has become more expensive, the EU is currently not able to meet the energy demand by 2030. Soon Europe will consume more electricity than it produces. Danish startup Hybird Energy’s technology makes it possible to cut down our redundant energy spend and meet our future energy demand. It does this by developing intelligent electrical panels powered by an AI energy cloud.
Funding to improve energy management
Now, Hybrid Energy has snapped €2.4 million in a funding round co-led by Swedish early-stage venture capital firm BackingMinds (which backed Uniqkey and Nitrovolt), and a UK-based Climate VC Transition. These investors are joined by existing backers 2degrees, a private investment company in Copenhagen and the family office for a co-founder of Urban Partners and EIKON Capital.
In addition, joining the round is also Notion Capital’s Pioneer Fund, two family offices and fifteen strategic angels, most notable Ekaterina Gianelli (Ex-Inventure), Louise Krogh Rindom (Monta), Jeppe Rindom (Pleo), Sune Alstrup (ex-OculusVR), Anders Bo Pedersen (ex-Meta), Christian Legene (Autobutler), Tony Kula (MeetYoo), Lasse Stockholm (Ex-Zenfit), Oliver Rye (Likeminded), Mickey Switzer Schubert-Suell (Simply), brothers Thomas + Kristian (Bookboon). With this, the total funding raised by the company accounts for €2.65 million.
The funding will be used to scale Hybird’s commercial efforts to address a growing demand for better energy management across Europe, add new automation capabilities to its energy cloud and expand into adjacent water and heating controls as well, building it into a complete energy optimisation platform.
“There are massive energy savings waiting to be unlocked in commercial buildings. As more renewable energy comes online on the grid there is a growing need to better manage electricity at the point of use. The key to doing this at scale is combining hardware and AI to automate decision making. Hybird’s breakthrough platform is set to completely revolutionise how electricity use is managed and open up a world of new possibilities.” said Ari Helgason, General Partner at Transition.
“Hybird’s technology has a real chance to make a significant impact on our energy grid – not in 10 years, but today. The combination of an experienced founding team and a truly refined product experience – from hardware to software to the end user, really stood out to us. Rarely do we see this level of talent come together, to solve one of our biggest challenges”, added Jasenko Hadzic, Principal at BackingMinds.
Masterminds behind this innovation
Hybird was founded in 2004 in Denmark by:
- Thomas Skovby (CCO), electrical engineer with deep insights into IOT – Thomas is the CCO and responsible for tech on the hardware side
- Morten Primdahl, ex-Zendesk co-founder and co-founder of Hybird (CTO), software engineer and responsible for building the engine that allows Hybird to operate electrical switchboards remotely, identifying unnecessary consumption and shutting it off
- Søren Berg, co-founder (CEO) is responsible for all strategy and commercial activities. Ex-McKinsey and running point on the business, strategic and commercial aspects of the business
- Johannes Torpe, co-founder (CDO) is responsible for the design process, from hardware to UX/UI – the customer journey and everything related to brand
They work with a team of 6+ a range of specialised free agents to help businesses identify all unnecessary electrical consumption and turn them off.
The birth of Hybird Energy
Søren Berg, co-founder of Hybrid Energy, told TFN: “Thomas Skovby has been working in the space between IT and electrical management for many years (known today as IOT). And while there has been exponential development in IT, electrical management has seen no real innovation since the 60ies! Hybird is digitising electrical switchboards and connecting it to the Hybird software, that gives businesses full transparency into their electrical consumption, at the circuit breaker level – this makes it possible to eliminate redundant consumption, resulting in big savings on OpEx and CO2 – 30% on average is what we have seen thus far.”
“Hybird was developed by Thomas originally, and Morten Primdahl. Having exited Zendesk, Morten returned to Denmark and wanted his new home to be as energy efficient as possible. However, the systems available were designed for enterprise sized businesses (and with really poor software solutions). So Thomas and Morten – who knew each other from the past – started developing this new solution, where the manual electrical switchboards were replaced by digital switchboards, at the circuit breaker level – that communicates with the Hybird software, he added.”
Enables businesses to participate in green transition
Today’s electricity consumption is a black box where all companies overconsume, due to the lack of transparency and limited options to reduce and manage consumption. Hybird empowers companies to take action by providing full transparency at the source level and with its real-time capabilities, enables buildings to be semi-autonomous in managing their electricity, water or heating. Hybrid Energy is one of the easiest ways for businesses to actively participate in the green transition, while being rewarded with lowered costs that can be added directly to the company bottom line.
As per the company, it is currently able to cut energy consumption by 30% on average for real estate and industrial companies and is now live at 15 sites, across several different industries, helping balance the energy grid in Denmark and reduce CO2 emissions.
It offers a one-of-kind hardware + software solution that enables business owners to take full control of their electricity data and machines. Once companies replace their current electricity panel with Hybird’s intelligent panels, they immediately get a granular and real-time picture of all electricity usage, at the source level of a building. From here, Hybrid’s software analyses electricity data to recommend cost savings, implement rules to automatically turn power on/off remotely during specific times, days, weeks etc. and to understand the electricity pattern of every single machine, enabling them to predict malfunctions, before it happens.
“Electrical switchboards have seen no significant innovation since the introduction of Automatic circuit breakers and residual current devices in the 1960s. With Hybird we pioneer a technology driven transformation in the sector, making us the easiest way for companies to participate in the green transition and for electrical contracting companies to finally get a digital overhaul of this key part of their business,” said Thomas Skovby, CCO & Founder of Hybird.
“We’re fortunate to be able to draw on significant advances in software and hardware that let us reimagine how we can access and surface highly technical data from electrical systems. If the last couple of decades of software eating the world taught us anything, it’s that simple work. And yet, vast domains like electrical infrastructure are still left behind. We are changing that with Hybird. We want to help make infrastructure more manageable by surfacing actionable data and we want to provide tools to simplify and improve daily operations for businesses,” noted Morten Primdahl, CTO & Co-founder of Hybird.
