Beebop.ai, a power grid orchestration software, announced its €4.9 million seed round, led by Angular Ventures, with support from Contrarian Ventures. Beebop is already used by leading utilities and manufacturers across Europe, the UK and the Middle East, and expects to control more than 100K residential assets under management in the coming year.
Beebop’s orchestration middleware efficiently enables utilities, grid operators, manufacturers and Virtual Power Plant (VPP) technology leaders to control complex fleets of residential assets. This solution empowers partners to deliver more value from the power system to end-customers, spanning solar and energy storage, EV chargers and heat pumps.
Jan-Willem Rombouts, CEO and founder of Beebop, commented, “We are at a crossroads where improved device connectivity, regulatory changes and advances in AI allow for new solutions. Beebop is the new abstraction layer in the power system driving material cost and emission savings for the end-consumer. We are excited to build Beebop with a team of industry veterans and now backed by outstanding investors.”
Beebop brings together a uniquely experienced team in the power grid flexibility market. Beebop is led by Jan-Willem Rombouts, who previously founded and scaled Virtual Power Plant pioneer REstore NV (acquired by Centrica in 2017). He is joined by Sandra Trittin, who previously founded and scaled Tiko Energy Solutions, a cleantech energy aggregator (acquired by ENGIE in 2019). The founding team is completed by former REstore NV executive Prof. Bert Claessens.
David Peterson, Partner at Angular Ventures, commented: “Energy markets are changing. Renewable energy is taking over. Electrification is on the rise. To be resilient, the grid of the future must be flexible. But orchestrating “behind-the-meter” devices at scale is a deeply technical, and more or less unsolved, challenge. The founders of Beebop, however, are exactly the right team to crack it. They’ve been leaders in the space for over a decade, and from our very first meeting, it was clear they had both the vision and the technical acumen to pull this off. We’re incredibly excited to lead Beebop’s seed round and support Jan-Willem and team on their mission to build the critical infrastructure layer that will power the grid of the future.”
Tomas Kemtys, Partner at Contrarian Ventures, added, “As a fund, we’ve wanted to invest in this space for a really long time – however, it’s taken us a long time to find a team we have the conviction to back, capable of building up the infrastructure technology to get the best out of our ever developing energy networks. Jan-Willem, Sandra, Bert and team are exceptional founders capable of building up an exciting business in a challenging, fragmented space – the most capable we’ve come across in this category. With impeccable market timing, we believe Beebop’s solution is uniquely positioned to finally empower end-consumers as critical contributors to grid resiliency.”
