Skeleton Technologies, Europe’s leading ultracapacitor manufacturer, has received €13 million in a Series C funding round led by FirstFloor Capital.
The fresh capital, which also comes from existing Skeleton Technologies’ investors UP Invest and Harju Elekter, brings total financing to €26.7 million and will support Skeleton Technologies in its next phase of revenue ramp-up to bring graphene ultracapacitors from high-end sectors to the mass market, while moving higher up the value chain with turnkey energy storage solutions. Skeleton Technologies was founded in 2009 and has offices in Tartu (Estonia) and Bautzen (Germany).
Ultracapacitors are high-power energy storage devices with more than 100 times increased power density across more than a million life-cycles, compared to the best battery technologies. Skeleton Technologies’ devices are the only ultracapacitors to use a patented graphene-based material in their manufacture, allowing them to deliver twice the energy density and five times the power density of their competitors.
FirstFloor Capital Principal and Executive Director Fahmi Hamzah said Skeleton Technologies’ rapid realisation of its business development goals showed it was suitable for inclusion in FirstFloor’s high-growth technology portfolio.
Fahmi Hamzah stated: “We believe Skeleton Technologies has great potential to not only transform the international ultracapacitor market through their patented curved graphene power cells but also to become a turnkey energy storage system specialist. Expanding its automated Estonian operations earlier this year and announcing that its German facility near Dresden will be at scale in start of 2017 shows the company is steadfastly moving towards this goal.”
Skeleton Technologies CEO Taavi Madiberk commented: “We’ve gone from signing our first key customer in 2011 – for sending graphene ultracapacitors into orbit with the European Space Agency – to last financial year when our focus switched from supplying solutions purely to high-end sectors to the transportation, grid and industrial equipment markets. Now the strategic goal is leveraging our competitive advantage by moving from a component supplier to system solution provider, creating a realistic pathway to become a dominant player in the ultrapacitor market.”
He continued: “We see FirstFloor Capital’s investment as a breakthrough moment for our company, marking an expansion beyond Europe and into the emerging markets of Asia – we especially see South-East Asia as a key growth region that has been undervalued by the market so far.”
Earlier this month the company announced a project partnership to develop the next generation of airships for industrial cargo applications with French firm, Flying Whales. This follows Skeleton Technologies developing high-performance ultracapacitor solutions for a European Space Agency project; the world’s first hybrid Kinetic Recovery System (KERS) for road freight vehicles; and, Engine State Module (ESM) for trucks.
