Exeger takes $38M to ramp up manufacturing of its versatile photo voltaic cells for self-powered devices – TechCrunch

Sweden’s Exeger, which for over a decade has been creating versatile photo voltaic cell know-how (referred to as Powerfoyle) that it touts as environment friendly sufficient to energy devices solely with gentle, has taken in one other tranche of funding to develop its manufacturing capabilities by opening a second manufacturing unit within the nation.

The $38 million elevate is comprised of $20M in debt financing from Swedbank and Swedish Export Credit score Company (SEK), with a mortgage amounting to $12M from Swedbank (partly underwritten by the Swedish Export Credit score Company (EKN) beneath the assure of funding credit for firms with improvements) and SEK issuing a mortgage amounting to $8M (partly underwritten by the pan-EU European Funding Fund (EIF)); together with $18M via a directed share challenge to Ilija Batljan Make investments AB.

The share challenge of 937,500 shares has a transaction share worth of $19.2 — which corresponds to a pre-money valuation of $860M for the photo voltaic cell maker.

Again in 2019 SoftBank additionally put $20M into Exeger, in two investments of $10M — coming into a strategic partnership to speed up the worldwide rollout of its tech and additional extending its varied investments in photo voltaic power.

The Swedish firm has additionally beforehand acquired a mortgage from the Swedish Vitality Company, in 2014, to develop its photo voltaic cell tech. However this newest debt financing spherical is its first on industrial phrases (albeit partly underwritten by EKN and EIF).

Exeger says its photo voltaic cell tech is the one one that may be printed in free-form and totally different colours, that means it may “seamlessly improve any product with limitless energy”, as its PR places it.

To this point two gadgets have built-in the Powerfoyle tech: A motorbike helmet with an built-in security taillight (by POC), and a pair of wi-fi headphones (by Urbanista). Though neither has but been commercially launched — however each are slated to go on sale subsequent month.

Exeger says its deliberate second manufacturing unit in Stockholm will permit it to extend its manufacturing capability tenfold by 2023, serving to it goal a broader array of markets sooner and accelerating its objective of mass adoption of its tech.

Its essential goal markets for the novel photo voltaic cell know-how presently embody shopper electronics, sensible dwelling, sensible office, and IoT.

Extra machine partnerships are slated as coming this yr.

“We don’t label our rounds however take a extra pragmatic view on fundraising,” stated Giovanni Fili, founder and CEO. “Creating a brand new know-how, a brand new power supply, in addition to laying the inspiration for a brand new business takes time. Thus, an organization like ours requires long-term strategic traders that each one purchase into the imaginative and prescient in addition to the general technique. We’ve spent a variety of time and power on this, and it has paid off. It has given the corporate the sources required, each money and time, to deliver an invention to a industrial launch, which is the place we’re right now.”

Fili added that it’s chosen to lift debt financing now “as a result of we are able to”.

“The identical reply as when requested why we construct a brand new manufacturing unit in Stockholm, Sweden, reasonably than overseas. We’ve at all times stated that when industrial, we’ll begin leveraging the steadiness sheet when securing funds for the following manufacturing unit. Due to our long-standing relationship with Swedbank and SEK, in addition to the good assist of the Swedish authorities via EKN underwriting a part of the loans, we had been capable of transfer this ahead,” he stated.

Discussing the forthcoming two debut gizmos, the POC Omne Everlasting helmet and the Urbanista Los Angeles headphones — which can each go sale in June — Fili says curiosity within the self-powered merchandise has “surpassed all our expectations”.

“Any product which integrates Powerfoyle is ready to cost beneath all types of gentle, whether or not from indoor lamps or pure outside gentle. The stronger the sunshine, the sooner it costs. The POC helmet, for instance, doesn’t have a USB port to energy the protection gentle as a result of the ambient gentle will maintain it charging, biking or not,” he tells TechCrunch.

“The Urbanista Los Angeles wi-fi headphones have already garnered super curiosity on-line. Customers can spend one hour outdoor with the headphones and acquire three hours of battery time. This implies most customers won’t ever want to fret about charging. So long as you have got our product in gentle, any gentle, it would continuously cost. That’s one of many key features of our know-how, we have now designed and engineered the photo voltaic cell to work wherever folks want it to work.”

“That is the yr of our industrial breakthrough,” he added in an announcement. “The exceptional response from the product releases with POC and Urbanista are clear indicators that is the proper time to introduce self-powered merchandise to
the world. We want mass scale manufacturing to comprehend our imaginative and prescient which is to the touch the lives of a billion folks by 2030, and that’s why the manufacturing unit is being constructed now.”