Munich-based encosa raises €25 million to bring battery storage to German SMEs

encosa, a Munich-based company specialising in battery energy storage systems (BESS) for commercial and industrial (C&I) businesses across Germany, has closed €25 million in Seed funding. The company has raised €25 million in under two years. 

The Seed round was led by Realyze Ventures, with participation from Verve Ventures, Bayern Kapital, Blum Ventures, and Kopa Ventures. Notably, all pre-Seed investors reinvested in this round. In the pre-Seed phase, First Momentum Ventures and Redstone served as lead investors, alongside Heliad, UTUM Funding for Innovators, and WEPA Ventures. It has also secured a scalable debt facility from a debt investor. 

Other investors include several business angels, including Andreas Kupke (co-founder and former COO/CFO of Finanzcheck.de), Marc Stilke (former CEO of Immobilienscout24), Sebastian Bärhold (co-founder of IDnow), as well as a consortium of family-owned businesses centred on WEPA Ventures and backed by better ventures. 

Sebastian Becker, co-founder and COO, encosa, said, “Storage projects are consistently underestimated — they’re complex infrastructure, and the job isn’t done when the system goes live. encosa delivers savings from day one and carries the operational risk for the long haul.”

The name encosa stands for ‘Energy Cost Savings’. Founded in June 2024 by Becker and Sascha Koberstaedt, encosa offers a one-stop shop solution covering planning, financing, installation and operation. It enables energy-intensive companies to reduce their energy costs and generate additional revenue from energy trading and arbitrage. With flexible financing and no extra operational burden, any business can put battery storage to work.

According to the company, for the German Mittelstand (SMEs), energy costs are the biggest and fastest-growing pressure on margins, and given ongoing geopolitical instability, with no relief in sight. 

encosa advocates for battery storage as the solution, a technology that reduces electricity costs and creates extra income through energy trading and arbitrage. However, identifying the right solution has traditionally demanded significant time, capital, and project management effort, a hurdle that ties up valuable resources. 

encosa claims that it was founded to tackle this hurdle and plans to scale its end-to-end solution to the German Mittelstand. Battery storage for energy-intensive businesses like chemicals, food, plastics, paper, glass, metals, engineering, and logistics is complex, involving technical, regulatory, and financial challenges. For a typical Mittelstand business, this means months of coordinating financing, grid connection, fire safety, permits, regulatory bodies and technical planning, while operating daily. encosa claims it can manage the entire process, allowing customers to focus on their core business.

The company points out that customers start saving from month one. Depending on the consumption profile and market conditions, the investment typically pays for itself within 18 months to five years. 

It states that its proprietary technology platform combines ‘behind the meter’ (energy cost savings) and ‘front of the meter’ (energy trading and arbitrage), thereby getting significantly more out of every installed system.

encosa offers flexible financing options, and customers can choose between buying, renting or leasing. It either provides the capital or supports the direct investment.

“Battery storage is taking the German Mittelstand by storm. The question is no longer ‘if’, but ‘how quickly’. encosa makes it easy for every business: reduce energy costs, with no hassle, no risk and no investment of your own,” said Sascha Koberstaedt, founder and CEO, encosa. 

With this funding, the company aims to grow its German operations and enhance its technology platform. Currently, it automatically optimises each battery for maximum economic benefit. Over time, it is evolving into a broader platform to aggregate batteries across multiple sites, enabling energy trading as a single virtual power plant (VPP). This increases the economic value of each installed system steadily. The primary focus is on Germany, which has over 100,000 potential customers, many with multiple locations. 

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