On Tuesday, Copenhagen-based Hybird Energy, a startup developing intelligent electrical panels powered by an AI energy cloud, announced that it has secured €2.4M funding co-led by BackingMinds (Swedish early-stage venture capital firm) and Transition (UK-based Climate VC).
Additionally, existing investors, including 2degrees, a private investment company in Copenhagen, and the family office for a co-founder of Urban Partners (€21bn AUM) and EIKON Capital, participated.
In addition, joining the round is also Notion Capital’s Pioneer Fund, two family offices, and fifteen strategic angels, most notable Ekaterina Gianelli (Ex-Inventure), Louise Krogh Rindom (Monta), Jeppe Rindom (Pleo), Sune Alstrup (ex-OculusVR), Anders Bo Pedersen (ex-Meta), Christian Legene (Autobutler), Tony Kula (MeetYoo), Lasse Stockholm (Ex-Zenfit), Oliver Rye (Likeminded), Mickey Switzer Schubert-Suell (Simply), brothers Thomas + Kristian (Bookboon).
The Danish company will use the funds to boost its commercial efforts in energy management across Europe, add automation features to its energy cloud, and expand into water and heating controls, creating a complete energy optimisation platform.
Birth of Hybird Energy
Thomas Skovby, Søren Berg, and Morten Primdahl founded Hybird Energy out of frustration with traditional electricity monitoring, which did not provide detailed insights.
This evolved into a unique business opportunity aimed at addressing one of the biggest challenges of our generation: the climate crisis.
Talking about the birth of Hybird Energy to Silicon Canals, Søren Berg says, “Thomas, the founder of Hybird and an electrical engineer started working with Morten Primdahl when he returned from the US after having exited Zendesk, which he co-founded. Morten wanted a system in his home, where he could manage electricity, however, there was nothing on the market that matched his needs, so he started building with Thomas, who then became Hybird. An energy optimisation platform, combining hardware and software, where all electricity in a building can be managed remotely resulting in large OpEx savings and CO2 emission reductions.”
What does Hybrid Energy do?
The company provides a unique hardware and software solution that helps business owners manage their electricity data and equipment.
By replacing their current electrical panel with Hybird’s smart panels, companies instantly access detailed, real-time information about their electricity usage at the source level of the building
The company’s intelligent electrical panels measure all consumption on the circuit breaker level, online and in real-time so we can remote control all electricity from a distance shut off unnecessary consumption (stand-by output) and create rules in the software, to make these savings lasting.
“AI will play an increasingly important role. Hybird is all about pattern recognition. Every single source of energy output in a building gives an electrical signature. Ventilation, lighting, screens – every single source creates a pattern. Every time we add a new device we learn more about these patterns and what the ideal output looks like, so we are creating training courses for our AI, to learn. Anomalies will be detected by the AI when it compares, and every anomaly from the perfect pattern is an opportunity to reduce consumption,” explains Berg.
The company’s software then analyzes this data to suggest ways to save money, set up automatic controls to turn the power on and off remotely at specific times, and understand the electricity usage patterns of each machine. Thus, businesses can foresee potential problems before they happen.
Prediction and prevention
The company’s platform features a preventive maintenance capability for machinery, which is based on real-time monitoring of electrical output.
The system measures leakage current detection, and if the patterns deviate from the ideal thresholds, Hybird triggers an alarm to notify the user.
“This results in the elimination of downtime and therefore no lost revenue. It’s a really powerful feature that serves as insurance to stay in business for our customers, SMBs in particular,” adds Berg.
On average, 30 per cent of the electricity consumed in buildings is unnecessary. Current manual switchboards offer limited solutions to this problem.
“Electrical switchboards have seen no significant innovation since the introduction of Automatic circuit breakers and residual current devices in the 1960s. With Hybird we pioneer a technology-driven transformation in the sector, making us the easiest way for companies to participate in the green transition and for electrical contracting companies to finally get a digital overhaul of this key part of their business,” says Thomas Skovby, CCO & Founder of Hybird.
Hybird provides digital panels and software that identify and reprogram this wasted electricity.
By eliminating 30 per cent of electrical consumption in commercial buildings, the reduction in CO2 emissions could significantly support the green transition.
Barriers in adoption
“When we present the business case and ROI for the business we are approaching, they are always positive and our hit rate at this point is close to 100 per cent,” says Revels Berg.
However, the main barriers to businesses’ adoption of Hybird’s technology primarily revolve around their willingness to invest in capital expenditure (CapEx) at the time of approach to realise potential savings.
“It is not an issue at this point, as stated above, particularly as regulatory energy reduction demands are growing in Europe,” he adds.
Currently, the company operates in industries such as office buildings, commercial real estate, hospitality (including hotels, restaurants, and industrial kitchens), and production facilities that rely on high electrical output machinery.
These sectors often experience costly downtime, which Hybird seeks to minimise. The company plans to enter the retail sector in 2025 while focusing on the Nordic region that year and expanding into new regions starting in 2026.
“We’re fortunate to be able to draw on significant advances in software and hardware that let us reimagine how we can access and surface highly technical data from electrical systems. If the last couple of decades of software eating the world taught us anything, it’s that simple works. And yet, vast domains like electrical infrastructure are still left behind. We are changing that with Hybird. We want to help make infrastructure more manageable by surfacing actionable data and we want to provide tools to simplify and improve daily operations for businesses,” says Morten Primdahl, CTO & Co-founder of Hybird.
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