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Ovo Group’s smart energy platform Kaluza is talking to “a number of parties” about possible investment opportunities, Utility Week understands.
The platform, which launched in 2019, has onboarded most of the five million customers served by Ovo and expanded internationally but has yet to win a re-platforming contract from another UK supplier.
The company operates with a separate management team to Ovo, which was recently rumoured to be bidding for Bulb despite having warned this summer that it faced breaching its banking covenants because of soaring power prices.
While declining to elaborate on the scale of possible investment, a spokesperson for Kaluza told Utility Week: “We are currently fielding investor interest from a number of parties and are excited about what those opportunities could further unlock for the business.”
Kaluza, which posted a £5.6 million turnover for 2021, was launched by Ovo following a strategic £200 million investment from the Mitsubishi Corporation which saw the Japanese firm acquire a 20% stake in Ovo.
As well as being a customer platform for energy retailers, Kaluza is designed to manage both software and hardware to support the integration of electric vehicles and dynamic battery storage onto the grid.
In recent years the company has been focused on expanding internationally, with Ovo announcing in 2020 it had signed a deal to allow the platform to be adopted by the energy retail arm of Italian oil giant Eni, starting in France.
In August of the following year it was revealed that Kaluza was accelerating its international ambitions by forming a partnership with Texas-based software company Innowatts in a deal which made its demand response services available to 45 million meters.
The company also has a licensing and investment agreement with AGL Energy, the largest retailer in Australia.
The news comes in the same week power retailer So Energy called off its search for investment.
In a statement the company’s co-founder Simon Oscroft said that due to the fact market conditions had become more stable, and that majority shareholder ESB was continuing to back the supplier, it was no longer seeking additional funding.
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