ChargeLab has raised $15 million to expand its API-first electric vehicle (EV) charger management platform. It finished 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.
“My partners and I have seen the power of software-first energy management solutions at scale before,” says Megan Guy, co-founder and partner at King River Capital, who will be joining ChargeLab’s board of directors in conjunction with closing of the round. “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.”
ChargeLab builds software to operate and optimize EV 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.
“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,” states 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 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).
“ChargeLab’s vision is to connect millions of EV chargers in the next decade,” comments 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,” adds Ehsan Mokhtari, co-founder and CTO. “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.”