Watty announces EUR 3 million in funding from Cleantech Invest and EQT Ventures

STOCKHOLM, Sweden July 12, 2016. Sweden based Watty has announced today a EUR 3 million investment round led by Nordic accelerator Cleantech Invest together with current and new investors. EQT Ventures, which recently announced a EUR 566 million fund to support tech-enabled start-up companies across Europe, also joined the round. Swedish Energy Agency participated with a grant.

Watty has become a market leader in disaggregation, a technology for identifying what home appliances are on, at what time, based on the electricity meter data. The company’s software approach excludes the need for hardware, cables or complicated installation procedures. Watty uses simple visualizations to break down users’ energy costs for immediate understanding of exactly how energy is spent in their homes and what they can do to reduce their energy bills. Several big European utilities are currently working with the company on large- scale deployments.

CEO of Cleantech Invest, Alexander Lidgren, who is a board member of Watty, comments: "The team of Watty has really impressed us since our initial peak-hole investment a little more than a year ago. Their technology has developed even faster than planned and has been thoroughly tested with customers in cooperation with some of the biggest energy companies in Europe. Watty provides what we really believe will be the energy bill of the future”.

“We’ve kept an eye on Watty’s founding team since the company’s inception. With a rare combination of entrepreneurial drive, best-in-class machine learning knowledge, and executional precision, Watty is perfectly fit to shake things up on the global energy market. When EQT Ventures got the chance to support their still early journey we didn’t hesitate”, says Hjalmar Winbladh, Founding Partner at EQT Ventures.

”I’m thrilled to be bringing new partners onboard”, says Watty CEO Hjalmar Nilsonne. ”Watty is taking on one of the biggest sectors of the economy – the energy industry - with a ground-breaking machine learning technology. Few investors know the in-and-outs of the latest machine learning developments, and even fewer know the energy sector well. Working with both Cleantech Invest and EQT Ventures is a perfect match for us. We get deep industry expertise from Cleantech Invest paired with a strong experience of scaling technology businesses globally from EQT Ventures”.

On the European energy market the margins on kWhs are falling and utilities have to find new ways of serving their customers to stay relevant. Watty is helping utility companies, energy storage companies and solar companies achieve lower customer acquisition costs, new revenues and increasing customer satisfaction. Watty’s technology is packaged as a simple-to-use software-as-a-service offering where data from anywhere is pushed to Watty’s platform. The product allows people to see their energy use broken down by appliance – and to compare each appliance’s cost to other similar homes. With this information tailored recommendations are presented about the smartest way to save energy and money. Watty also offers real- time safety features for checking the current activity in your home – for those ‘ did-I-leave-the-stove-on’ moments.

This investment follows a 1 MEUR seed funding in 2014. To learn more about Watty, please visit www.watty.io

Note to press: Photos are available upon request to press@watty.io