Founders on Funding: Dexter Energy’s Luuk Veeken on distributed renewable energy assets, use of AI, and scaling

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On April 18, Dutch startup Dexter Energy announced its €10.5M Series B round led by ETF Partners and Astelia, with participation from existing investors Newion, PDENH, and Rockstart.

The funding came more than two years after the company had raised €2M in Series A funding.

Two years is a long time and can feel eternal in the startup world, but Dexter Energy is exhibiting a different energy.

On one end, it has avoided raising funds when venture capitals were flush with cash and has now raised at a time when we are talking about the VC winter.

Luuk Veeken, CEO of Dexter Energy, calls it a “conscious decision” and adds, “looking into the future we anticipate we might need another funding round in a few years down the line, so not in the near future.”

The clarity around funding from Luuk is not only astounding but also reassuring considering the renewable energy industry.

Sustainable electricity grid

Luuk Veeken Dexter Energy
Luuk Veeken is the CEO and co-founder of Dexter Energy | Image Credit: Dexter Energy

Energy transition plays a key role in the ongoing efforts to decarbonise the planet and increased penetration of renewable energy sources like wind and solar into the energy supply mix is crucial.

Amsterdam-based Dexter Energy helps energy companies with necessary technology to accelerate this transition as fast as they can.

“Our company’s mission is to enable a fully sustainable electricity grid, with 100 per cent renewable energy meeting all demand,” says Luuk.

Its three products – generation forecasting, trade optimisation, and flexibility optimisation – help energy companies make better informed decisions and optimise their short-term power trading strategies.

Luuk says one of the challenges with transition to renewable energy is the shift from generating electricity from a handful of fossil-fuel power plants to generating from thousands of assets, mainly windmills and solar power plants.

All these distributed assets could make managing a renewable energy portfolio a difficult task.

“This is due to the fact that managing thousands of distributed assets needs a more specialised and robust IT infrastructure,” explains Luuk.

He adds, “And at the same time, the short-term optimisation of wind and solar power always depends on forecasts. As we know from our weather apps, forecasts change all the time and they continuously need updates.”

AI can help

Dexter Energy Management Team
CCO Hubert Penn, CEO Luuk Veeken, CFO Ana Proença Caria, CPO Tom Lemmens, and CTO Mehmet Karadayi form the management team | Image Credit: Dexter Energy

Luuk believes that “AI can really help” solve this challenge of extracting the best output from these distributed assets.

“I started Dexter Energy seven years ago to create the technology that continuously produces the best forecasts to enable energy companies to plan and balance their power, since supply and demand need to be equal at all times,” Luuk says.

He says the cost for renewables was coming down very quickly when they began and the lower price hasn’t stopped.

For them, it was clear that renewable energy would be scaled up globally and with the adoption of new AI technologies, Dexter Energy “could be a key player.”

Dexter Energy now counts around 30 energy companies as customers including Greenchoice, Axpo, Giga Storage, and EDF Luminus.

Its AI solutions help these customers have the most accurate data to make informed decisions and optimise their power trading strategies.

Dexter claims its generation forecasting to be one of the top 3 most accurate renewable generation forecasts in the market.

That accuracy, which delivers up to 35 per cent cost savings, is possible thanks to its superior AI/ML models.

Like every other AI company, Dexter is also dependent on terabytes of data, which needs to be cleaned, checked, edited, transformed, and timestamped. This requires complex infrastructure and time remains of essence.

“There is always a trade-off between getting a new forecast as soon as new data comes in vs using more compute intensive models that take more time to output a forecast,” Luuk observes.

Surpassing funding target

One of the interesting things about Dexter Energy’s recent Series B funding is that they initially expected to raise only between €8M and €10M.

With €10.5M in funding, they have surpassed their own target and Luuk doesn’t shy away from revealing that there is a lot of interest from multiple venture firms to invest in the startup.

Luuk Fons Hubert Tom Dexter
From left to right: Luuk Veeken, Fons de Leeuw, Hubert Penn, and Tom Lemmens | Image Credit: Dexter Energy

“We have seen lots of interest from several parties which puts us in a very fortunate position in the current global slowdown of tech investments,” he says.

Apart from the influx of capital, Dexter Energy is mostly excited to onboard ETF Partners as lead investor with its latest round.

For Luuk and CCO Hubert Penn, ETF Partners is an ally who shares their vision that “AI is a crucial element in the energy transition towards a fully carbon-free power system.”

“It is inspiring to join and support a purpose-driven team and to actively contribute to reducing emissions and eliminating millions of tons of CO2 through the Dexter smart approach that solves imbalances in the grid,” Remy de Tonnac, Partner at ETF Partners, says.

With the new capital, the startup is looking to accelerate its expansion outside of the Netherlands, including Belgium, Germany, and Romania.

The startup also aims to double its team strength to 80 by the end of this year.

Future of Dexter Energy and data-driven AI

Despite the fact that it has raised substantial funding amidst the economic uncertainty, Luuk says it required a lot of time which they couldn’t spend on growing the business.

It may be a boon for many founders, but for Luuk, it is a challenge and this razor focus on growth is what makes the startup really interesting.

In terms of the immediate future, Luuk says they want to fast-track their product roadmap and assemble all its services into a complete, self-service cockpit.

Dexter envisions a product where its customers will be able to balance their renewables portfolio while also optimising their trading strategies and minimising balancing costs.

Luuk says founders should focus on products that solve real-world problems and create a positive impact.

“Make sure to align your business with the impact you want to make to make our world just a bit better,” he adds.

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Karthek Iyer

Karthek Iyer is the Senior Editor and Content Marketing Lead at Silicon Canals, covering news and partner content. He leads our collaboration with clients like AWS, Remote, Flippa, Techleap, Startup Amsterdam, etc. Previously he was a personal technology writer reviewing consumer products at leading Indian newspaper and digital media outlets such as Indian Express, Digit, BGR India, and Pricebaba. He graduated with a bachelor's degree in Engineering and lives in Mumbai.

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