⚡ These EV startups raised $800m+ 🤑

+ Spark Alliance Phase 1, who has the most open OCPP and more..

AuthorAuthor

Janek Metzner & Julius Wilhelm
July 28, 2025 • Estimated Reading Time: 9 minutes

Happy Monday! Welcome to Electric Avenue, your trusted purveyor of fine EV news. Come check out the goods below. 👇

Here’s what we have for you today:

  • EV (Startup) Funding News 📈

  • Who’s the most Openest? Chargelab releases “OpenOCPP” 🔓

  • 3 Links 🔗

  • Charging Station of the Week 🔌

  • Meme of the week 🤡

Not subscribed yet? Sign up here 👇🏼

Let's dive in!

This Issue Is Sponsored By…

…No one. But it could be you.

Here's the deal: We've created a way for you to get your message in front of our readers - people just like you - right here in our weekly newsletter.

This will help us keep the newsletter and community work going. Our goal is to include only relevant messages about EV charging products and services.

If you run a charging or EV-related business and want to reach over 2,600+ engaged EV experts and industry professionals, contact us today!

Janek & Julius

EV (Startup) Funding News 📈

Guess what day it is? It's our recurring “Money Monday” 🤑 - Here's who secured the bag in recent EV startup transactions💰 and which startups you should keep an eye on 👀:

Electra raises up to €433 million in a new green loan: Electra, a leading European ultra‑fast EV charging operator, has secured up to €433 million in a green loan to accelerate the deployment of its high‑power charging network across nine countries. Since inception in 2021 the company secure a total funding of more than €1  billion. (Link)

Cariqa Secures €4M for EV Charging Payments: Berlin-based Cariqa has raised €4 million in seed funding to try something new in EV charging payments across Europe. Co-led by Contrarian Ventures and Anthemis, this climatetech startup is tackling fragmented pricing with a platform that offers charge point operators more direct control over their pricing. (Link)

GRIDSERVE Powers Up with £100M: UK charging operator GRIDSERVE has secured £100 million in equity from TPG, Infracapital, and Mitsubishi to fuel its Electric Highway expansion. (Link)

FLEXeCHARGE Lands €5M for Smart Charging: German startup FLEXeCHARGE raised €5 million to advance its load and energy management platform. By integrating EV charging with renewable energy and flexibility markets, they’re helping operators cut costs and boost efficiency. (Link)

Lemonflow Scores Pre-Seed Funding for AI customer support: AI-driven charging startup Lemonflow completed a pre-seed round at an undisclosed funding amount to develop a voice-based AI agent for charging infrastructure providers (Link)

Wallbox Chargers Bags $15M in Spain: Spanish EV charging leader Wallbox Chargers raised $15 million through new share issuance to several shareholders, including the Spanisch government (Link)

Believ Acquires Switch EV, Raises £300M: UK charge point operator Believ recently made a move to acquire Switch EV and it’s OCPP 2.0.1-focused charging backend. As part of the acquisition Switch EV Founder Marc Mueltin and four engineers joined Believ. Now the company is moving to expand to even more sites and secured £300 million in investment. (Link investment, Link acquisition)

ADS-TEC Energy Closes $50M Round: German energy tech firm ADS-TEC Energy secured $50 million to advance its high-performance charging and energy storage solutions. (Link)

RetailSonar acquires German startup ladeplan: RetailSonar has acquired German startup ladeplan to combine their predictive geomarketing expertise and strengthen their international growth in the e‑mobility sector. (Link)

Who’s the most Openest? Chargelab releases “OpenOCPP” 🔓

Canadian chaging company Chargelab is most known for its Enterprise OCPP cloud backend. Now the folks over in Toronto released “OpenOCPP”, an open-source embedded software stack for EV chargers under an Apache 2.0 license.

The Company describes it as a hardware-agnostic, pre-certified software stack that supports both OCPP 1.6J and 2.0.1. According to Chargelab, OpenOCPP can run on any underlying hardware, from a lightweight ESP32 microcontroller to a full Linux embedded system.

OpenOCPP therefore partially overlaps with other Open Source Embedded EVSE software projects like the Linux Foundation’s EVerest Project.

Over the past years we’ve also seen an increasing number of Open Source cloud implementations of OCPP, you can find an overview of those in our post ⚡ Why Open Source Charger Management Software is here to stay! 

  • One app to roam them all - Sparkalliance launches first integration stage 🇪🇺: Back in April, we reported on the announcement of Spark Alliance, Europe's first curated network of fast-charging operators, which includes IONITY, Fastned, Electra, and Atlante. Taking inspiration from airline partnerships such as the Star Alliance, the goal is to enable customers to “roam” between member stations offering a similarly high standard of charging experience. The first stage of technical integration has now gone live, meaning users of any of the partner networks can see all over 1,700 sites and 11,000 charging points across more than 25 countries on their preferred app. (Link)

  • Under pressure - exclusive charging networks in China 🇨🇳: The Chinese government is urging operators of brand-exclusive charging networks, such as Tesla, to make their stations available to the public (Link).

  • Best range meets best charging network🤝: Lucid has announced that its Lucid Air Sedan models will gain access to the Tesla Supercharger network in North America on 31 July. This comes approximately six months after the same access was granted to the Lucid Gravity SUV model. The Lucid Air will be able to charge at up to 50 kW at low-voltage v3 Supercharger cabinets, replenishing up to 200 miles of range per hour. At Tesla’s upcoming 1000V v4 Supercharger stations, Lucid Air owners will enjoy peak charging rates of over 300 kW. (Link).

Most-clicked link last week: Was the link to our EV startup profile on Electra in ⚡Electra's Blueprint for Urban Fast Charging: Combining Tech DNA with Infrastructure Operation - E-Mobility Startup Interview 

Charging Station of the Week 🔌 

Tesla Charging recently deplyed a “mobile” Supercharger setup at a site in Croatia to support summer travel for European Tesla owners:

  • 📍 Otocac, Croatia

  • 🔌 added 8x mobile Tesla V4 Supercharger posts

  • 🔋1 x Tesla Megapack to power up to 8 Supercharger stalls

Meme of the Week 🤡

🤣🤣🤣

That's a wrap for this week! Let us know how you feel and leave some feedback (We read every single one of these 🙂 ):

Reader Review of the Week ✍️

“Great interview!”

What do you think of today´s edition?

Login or Subscribe to participate in polls.

Electric Avenue Logoo

Someone forwarded this to you? Subscribe now - it's free!

DISCLAIMER: None of this is financial or tax advice. This newsletter is strictly educational and is not investment advice or a solicitation to buy or sell any assets or to make any financial decisions. The Electric Avenue team may hold investments in or may otherwise be affiliated with the companies discussed.

Reply

or to participate.