With the successful closing of this most recent financing round, Insolight plans to scale up the deployment and commercial rollout of its product, Insolagrin. The EPFL spinoff, which is operating at the intersection of cleantech and agritech, is innovating solar installations. The company participated in the Venture Kick and Venture Leaders programs and was named a TOP 100 Swiss Startup every year from 2016 to 2020.
This round brings reinforcement to Insolight's shareholding structure with lead investor Demeter, a major European venture capital player in agritech and cleantech industries, and Smart Energy Innovation Fund, the Corporate Venture Capital Fund of Energie 360°, a Zurich-based sustainable energy and mobility service provider. They were joined by the existing investors, Verve Ventures and Zürcher Kantonalbank, who are continuously supporting the company’s growth.
Founded in Lausanne in 2015 by Laurent Coulot (CEO), Mathieu Ackermann (CTO), and Florian Gerlich (Product Architect), Insolight is bringing a dynamic agrivoltaic infrastructure solution to the market. Branded Insolagrin, the company's solar installations enable high electricity generation on agricultural land while allowing crop growers to dynamically adjust and optimize light exposure while protecting crops. Insolight developed a Global Partnership Program, which Migros and SwissRe Foundation have already joined.
The funds are instrumental to deploy Insolight’s first large-scale Insolagrin installations (hectare size/megawatts scale), serving first berry growers in Switzerland and France. The company then aims to replicate those first agrivoltaic installations globally and increase the number of targeted crops. The round will also support the commercial scale-up and the development of the existing projects’ pipeline, targeting multiple tens of millions of Euros in the next two years.
Insolight was a Venture Kick winner in 2016 and a Venture Leader Technology in 2017. The company was also named one of the TOP 100 Swiss Startups every year from 2017 to 2020.
In 2019, the startup was supported with EUR 10.6 million in EU funding, via the HIPERION project coordinated by the Swiss Center for Electronics and Microtechnology CSEM. It also set a new efficiency standard for solar panels that year. In 2020, the startup closed a Series A financing round in with CHF 5 million.
"Venture Leaders was an incredible dive-in into the Silicon Valley ecosystem, where we got to meet many investors, entrepreneurs, and potential partners in a very short time. We are extremely thankful to the people running the program," said Laurent Laurent Coulot, Insolight co-founder and CEO, in 2019.
"Being a past VentureKick winner and one of the TOP 100 Swiss Startups truly helped us get on the investors’ map and build credibility. This is challenging, especially in the early stage, and we would not have reached this level of funding without their continuous support," he added after raising funds in 2020.
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