Moonwatt – an energy storage company founded by seasoned professionals with a track record at global leaders like Tesla, EDF, Siemens, Scatec, and Freyr Battery – announced it has raised €8 million to unlock the true, 24/7 power of solar with its disruptive sodium-ion battery system. The funding was co-led by daphni and LEA Partners, Founders Future, AFI Ventures (by Ventech), and Kima Ventures also participated along with strategic business angels and customers.
This funding will accelerate the development and deployment of Moonwatt’s hardware and software technology, expand the team, and drive the shift toward a cleaner, more resilient global energy ecosystem.
After over a decade in energy innovation, co-founders CEO Zukui Hu, CTO Guillaume Mancini, and CCO Valentin Rota launched Moonwatt on the belief that clean energy only works if the systems that power it are scalable, sustainable, and competitive. To achieve this, Moonwatt is developing the world’s first energy storage solution for solar power.
Solar power has scaled faster than any energy source in history, with capacity set to increase tenfold by 2030. But despite being affordable and abundant, it isn’t dispatchable 24/7. Power floods the grid during daylight hours when demand and prices are low, but when the sun sets, the infrastructure is not in place to keep it flowing. This usually leads to congestion and price cannibalization and over 3,000 GW of renewable projects are currently stuck in grid backlogs. In contrast, wholesale prices regularly plunge below zero due to the excess, forcing plant owners to shut down production or sell at a loss.
Moonwatt’s energy storage systems ditch lithium-ion for sodium-ion – a 1000 times more abundant, a third cheaper, and safer alternative better suited to building scalable, sustainable, and cost-competitive stationary storage.
When deployed, the systems will co-locate storage with solar plants to increase their capacity from 15-20% to 80% to reduce the need for costly grid upgrades, all while cutting congestion, stabilizing prices and making round-the-clock clean energy a reality. And this is part of Moonwatt’s goal to build a truly optimized solar system to unlock solar’s potential and make it the dominant power source worldwide. At full potential, this approach can help the industry abate up to 14 GtCO2 per year by 2050.
KEY QUOTES:
“We started our product design from a blank sheet of paper, freeing ourselves from legacy features inherited from other segments of the battery industry, with the goal of designing a system from scratch that is fundamentally cheaper, safer and more reliable. Our vision is a product that can be deployed anywhere, and that can be scaled up multiple orders of magnitude without facing raw materials scarcity.”
– Zukui Hu, CEO and Co-Founder of Moonwatt
“Renewable power growth has exceeded all expectations, but we’re approaching a tipping point where it won’t be able to scale further without better energy storage. Created by industry veterans, Moonwatt is solving this with a differentiated storage product built specifically for solar – this is the breakthrough the industry has been missing.”
– Paul Bazin, Partner at daphni
“By focusing on sodium-ion, Moonwatt represents a paradigm shift, finally making 24/7 renewable power truly competitive and unlocking massive value for operators and consumers. We’ve been amazed by the complementary skillset and execution power of the team and are excited to back Moonwatt.”
– Moritz Pagel, Investor at LEA Partners
“At the heart of every game-changing innovation is an exceptional team. Moonwatt combines world-class expertise with relentless execution to tackle one of the biggest challenges in renewable energy: scalable and cost-efficient storage. Their visionary approach and breakthrough technology have the potential to transform how we store and distribute clean energy, and we’re proud to support them on this journey.”
– Marc Menasé, Founding Partner at Founders Future
