Ember gets £11m in funding round

Ember today announced that it has raised an £11 million Series A financing round, led by urban transport environmental finance specialists, Inven Capital, 2150 and AENU.

Existing investors Pale Blue Dot and SkyScanner co-founder Gareth Williams also participated in the oversubscribed round. The company will use the funding to accelerate the roll-out of its electric coach services and further invest in EmberOS, the platform that controls the network and delivers a ‘game-changing’ customer experience.

Ember is tackling the challenge of electrifying the most highly-utilised vehicles on the road – intercity coaches. These often travel over 250,000 kilometres per year, far exceeding the average mileage of even long-distance trucks. The vast distances and large vehicle size mean the emissions saved from electrifying each intercity bus far outweighs other vehicle categories, says Ember.

Rather than just providing software to help legacy operators go electric, Ember is taking a ‘full-stack,’ first-principles approach to create a new, highly optimised, all-electric network. This allows Ember to flexibly scale across multiple geographies and seamlessly adapt to shifting passenger demands to offer a superior customer experience at lower cost – all with zero emissions.

This approach includes building its own dedicated ultra-fast charging network, designing and operating its own routes and working closely with its manufacturing partner on vehicle development. Everything is brought together by EmberOS, the proprietary tech platform that orchestrates all operations, including charge management, routing, and end-to-end network optimisation.

The goal is to both take advantage of the superior margins achieved by optimal use of electric coaches and to take cars off the road by offering a dramatically superior and far more climate-friendly travel experience at a lower cost. Ember has five new charging hubs under parallel development, all modelled on their core hub blueprint. Ember’s Dundee hub is capable of delivering charging speeds of 600kW to a single vehicle, with a large proportion of the power coming from the 4MW of on-site wind turbines. Future hubs are co-located with renewables where possible, further reducing energy costs.

Over 750,000 journeys have already been made with Ember and that’s expected to double over the coming year as the network expands. Ember will soon take delivery of the first batch of its next-generation bus, with a 563kWh battery and a range of over 500km. Ember is running services 24/7 at an hourly frequency. Each bus covers up to 900 kilometres per day with multiple, high-speed charging sessions.

Keith Bradbury, co-founder of Ember, said: “Travelling by bus or coach doesn’t have to be rubbish. It should be possible to deliver an experience that beats a car – because someone else is doing the driving so you can have your time back – but that requires a relentless focus on the passenger experience. Things like live tracking that actually works, super-simple pricing, easy ticket changes and near-perfect reliability.”

“Under the hood it’s a delightfully complicated problem to solve” adds Pierce Glennie, co-founder of Ember. “EmberOS is the digital twin of our network, and we continue to add layers of data that enable the system to always know what’s going on. That means things like real-time vehicle states, current traffic conditions, nearby bus lanes, battery cell temperatures and the health of our chargers. When you put all of that together you can really bring down operational costs and deliver a better experience.”

Inven Capital is co-lead of Ember’s financing round alongside 2150 and AENU: “We have been impressed with both Keith and Pierce as founders and as visionaries of the future of shared transportation,” said Daniel Edgerley, Investment Director, Inven Capital. “Our commitment to the company underscores our belief in their customer-centric and innovative approach to electrification and digitalisation across the business.

“Their decision to fundamentally link their smart infrastructure design, assets and technology platform enables unparalleled optimisation, as well as visibility and data-evidenced insights that gives clean transportation a clear advantage over incumbent solutions. We are excited to be a part of Ember’s mission of revolutionising transportation.”

“At 2150, we love founders that are solving some of the world’s biggest problems,” said Rahul Parekh, Partner, 2150. “Intercity travel represents the majority of passenger miles and 90% of those journeys happen in the car so decarbonising this sector has huge sustainability impact. With Ember, Keith and Pierce have developed an innovative, full-stack, electrified bus fleet, using technology to provide superior customer service and fantastic operating margins compared to legacy solutions. We are delighted to be supporting them alongside our friends at Inven Capital and AENU in building the next generation of inter-city transport.”

Transport accounts for around 20% of global CO² emissions – almost half of which stem from passenger road transport: “We are thrilled to support them on this journey as we enable a modal shift to greener transportation and expect the technology to power many networks going forward as they grapple with the complexities of electrification at scale,” said Siobhan Brewster, Partner, AENU

 

About Inven Capital

Inven Capital is a European VC fund with EUR 500m fund size focused on later-stage climate tech investments in Europe and Israel, backed by CEZ Group and the European Investment Bank (EIB). Inven Capital’s strategy is to seek out investment opportunities in innovative and fast growing climate tech startups with a focus on CO2 footprint reduction. It primarily focuses on later-stage growth investment opportunities with sound business models proven by realised revenues and long-term growth potential. The fund is a member of Invest Europe (European Private Equity and Venture Capital Association), VentureESG and Cleantech for Europe. Inven Capital has been investing since 2015.

 

About 2150

2150 is a venture capital firm investing in technology companies that seek to sustainably reimagine and reshape the urban environment. 2150’s investment thesis focuses on major unsolved problems across what it calls the ‘Urban Stack’, which comprises every element of the built environment, from the way our cities are designed, constructed and powered, to the way people live, work and are cared for. 2150 is part of Urban Partners, a platform of vision-aligned, differentiated, investment strategies shaped around urban problem solving.

 

About AENU

AENU is an Article 9 climate tech fund, focused on early stage investments in northern Europe. The diverse team includes former unicorn-founders (Forto), impact-activists (LFCA) and institutional investors (Earlybird/SpeedInvest/Macquarie). AENU’s impact methodology is frequently quoted and it specialises in energy transition, carbon removal and industrial decarbonization technologies. Recent portfolio investments include Monta (Creandum), Hometree (2150, EIP), Xfuel (USV), UNDO (LowerCarbon Capital) and Alcemy (Galvanize).