Seattle Techstars graduate LevelTen Energy, a startup developing a platform that matches small- and medium-sized businesses with renewable energy suppliers, today announced that it’s raised $20.5 million in series B financing led by Prelude Ventures. This latest round saw participation from a raft of investors including Exelon’s Constellation Technology Ventures, Equinor Energy Ventures, and Total Ventures, along with existing investors Avista Development, Element 8 Fund, Founders’ Co-op, Techstars Ventures, and Wireframe Ventures. It brings the company’s total raised to $27.3 million following a $6.8 million series A round in October 2017.
CEO Bryce Smith says that the fresh capital will be used to expand LevelTen’s product suite in North America and Europe, open its platform to new channel providers, and grow the company’s workforce.
“Historically, excessive market opacity, cost, and risk prevented all but a select group of … buyers from signing utility-scale power purchase agreements. This exclusionary problem is one we’re committed to addressing,” said Smith, who founded LevelTen in 2016 after a 20-year stint in the corporate clean energy selling-and-buying business. “In the past year, LevelTen’s products afforded market access to small and medium-sized corporations in North America. With this new investment, we will open the door to an international community of buyers, sellers and service providers, supporting the entire renewable procurement ecosystem.”
On the energy purchaser side of the equation, LevelTen’s wholesale market team applies analytics to create mutual fund-like energy portfolios. They blend together over 750 solar and over 300 wind projects under development in North America to create a marketplace of roughly 109 gigawatts of resources, which LevelTen parcels out to customers individually in suitable volumes.
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LevelTen leverages novel transaction standards and credit solutions to pre-negotiate terms and reduce purchase price allocation. As for energy providers, the company syndicates buyers and facilitates sales with dynamic contract resolution products.
The company claims, on average, that it’s able to cut down on sales cycles by 50%.
“LevelTen gained market traction and product validation in 2018 and we are very excited to increase our ownership stake by leading the series B financing,” said Prelude Ventures managing director Tim Woodward, who will join the company’s board of directors. “We think this will become an essential tool for corporate and industrial procurement of renewable energy and that is a market that is growing rapidly. The engagement in this round of several global energy partners should only further establish the LevelTen platform.”
To date, LevelTen claims its Fortune 500 clients have procured $1 billion dollars of renewable energy through its marketplace, and the firm says that it’s worked to secure deals with household brands like Bloomberg, Cox, Gap, Salesforce, and Workday. Its momentum is fueled in part by increased corporate demand for clean energy procurement; according to the Business Renewables Center, U.S. companies signed power purchase agreements for a record-breaking 6.43 gigawatts of renewable power in 2018.
“The enthusiastic response from companies to LevelTen’s technology and services not only gives me hope for our company’s future, but it also makes me optimistic about the future of renewable energy,” added Smith. “By making it easier for companies to secure a PPA, LevelTen is ushering in a new wave of corporate renewable energy procurement.”
