Berlin-based trawa raises €10M to use AI to make buying renewable energy easier for SMEs

 Credits: Mike Butcher And Https://Techcrunch.Com/ 1:57 AM PDT • May 15, 2024

Image Credits: Trawa founders. (Photograph by Marzena Skubatz)

The brutal invasion of Ukraine by Russia in February 2022 took businesses that depended on oil and gas energy by surprise. Suddenly, renewable energy became crucial to survival. But how best to buy it?

That was the germination of the idea behind trawa, a Berlin-based renewable energy supplier that recently raised €10 million in a seed round led by Balderton Capital. The funding round brings the startup’s total capital raised to more than €12 million.

Trawa’s pitch is that it simplifies energy purchasing and management for small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) by leveraging two things: An AI-powered platform that lets businesses buy from renewable energy sources, and downstream data from the customers themselves about when they need energy most. 

Europe’s ongoing energy crisis has seen electricity prices spike two to three times higher than the U.S. Higher prices have also impacted manufacturing in the Eurozone, in decline for more than a year, and German industry is expected to decline by 1.5% this year due to higher energy prices and interest rates. 

Renewable energy can help businesses alleviate some of those pains, but even though many companies want to switch to green energy sources, the complexity of defining green energy and the security of constant supply is problematic.

Trawa’s co-founder and CEO David Budde hit on the idea of using AI to streamline green energy supply while he was at Bain and Company. He realized economic problems and sustainability regulation were both hitting businesses at the same time. 

“Prices skyrocketed, volatility increased, and their core business was being hit. All of a sudden, their products were no longer profitable because the energy costs were rising so fast,” he told TechCrunch.

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