Axle Energy, an energy flexibility platform that turns EV chargers, batteries and heat pumps into grid-balancing capacity, has raised $25 million in Series A funding led by Energize Capital, with participation from existing investors Accel, Picus Capital and Eka Ventures.

As electrification, data centres and more variable renewable generation reshape power systems, grid operators and energy companies are looking for lower-cost ways to balance supply and demand without relying as heavily on expensive fossil-fuel generation at peak times.

Axle’s Virtual Power Plant (VPP) platform enables OEMs, utilities and fleet operators to connect EV chargers, batteries and heat pumps to electricity markets, so hundreds of thousands of distributed energy assets can be coordinated to meet the needs of the grid. By making that flexibility available when and where it is needed, Axle unlocks capacity that already exists. The result is a lower-cost way to balance the grid that can help reduce energy bills while rewarding participating consumers and asset owners.

Axle currently coordinates more than 300,000 connected assets and manages more than 2GW of connected capacity, comparable in scale to a nuclear power plant. Through flexibility programmes run with Axle’s partners, consumers earn around £10 a month on average, with participants collectively earning millions of pounds last year.