Danish electric vehicle (EV) charging firm Monta has closed an additional £26 million (€30 million) as part of a Series A+ round to accelerate the rollout of EV charging infrastructure.
It is understood the additional funding will provide Monta with a means to expand into North America and consolidate its position across European countries ahead of the internal combustion engine sale ban.
This includes the UK, Germany, the Nordics and eight more territories across Europe.
The new financing also builds on the £12.5 million (€15 million) received in a Series A funding round earlier this year aiming to support Monta’s expansion into two new European countries.
“We are aiming to fully digitalise the EV ecosystem to tackle all the immediate challenges within the industry and build toward a more transparent and flexible future,” said Casper Rasmussen, CEO of Monta.
“By partnering with hardware OEMs we can deliver new features straight out of the box, like our new feature that allows operators to set a percentage on top of the spot price in order to follow the market fluctuations and automatically offer a fair price for charging.”
“The investment from Energize and our returning investors is a strong vote of confidence in our vision, team, and software as the cornerstone of the mobility infrastructure of the future.”
Monta’s technology is regarded as an all-in-one EV charging platform and can be utilised by customers wanting to simplify and streamline the deployment, use and management of EV charging points. With initial success in Denmark and in Europe, the company expanded to the UK in August 2021.
The technology is for both EV drivers and chargepoint owners, with its management system providing chargepoint owners with a solution to attract users and manage its use, pricing, access and transactions.
The Series A+ round had been led by Energize Ventures, a global investment manager, with participation from returning investors Creandum, Pale Blue Dot, byFounders, and Headline.
“The market penetration of electric vehicles is climbing sharply as economic, regulatory, and climate levers accelerate EV adoption – and deployment of charging infrastructure has to keep pace. We expect more than 1.6 million public chargers and 20 million private charging stations to be deployed in the US and Europe by 2025,” said Juan Muldoon, partner at Energize Ventures.
“As the market for charge point hardware grows and commoditises, Monta offers a software solution that enables a consistent, improved charging experience for players throughout the EV charging value chain – from installers to drivers.”
Further down the line, Monta has set its eyes upon expanding its product development to include grid management services as EV adoption ramps up. Its vision will see the company facilitate the sale of excess power back to the grid, manage interoperability with other zero carbon technologies, aid in the creation of local energy markets and empower end users with ownership over their energy consumption.
“The ability to take advantage of these new opportunities requires changes in information flows among grid devices as well as innovations in communication and coordination tools that increase the observability, predictability, and controllability of the grid,” said Rasmussen.
“The societal impact and environmental potential of these technologies are massive. Monta is at the forefront of developing the systems needed to monitor and reward this flexibility to create an equitable energy solution for all EV drivers.”
In October 2021, Monta released its virtual queuing feature in order to simplify the process of charging EVs.
This had been launched to allow drivers to join virtual queues at one or more charging sites and receive a notification detailing when a chargepoint had become available. In doing so, this reduces the chance of vehicles running out of power while making long journeys.
Current±’s publisher Solar Media is running the EV World Congress on 5 and 6 October at the Leonardo Royal Hotel Tower Bridge. To find out more and get your ticket, see here.
