Can Berlin’s Cloover, with $1.2B in fresh funding, solve Europe’s distributed energy crunch?
- ByStartupStory | January 23, 2026
Europe’s energy landscape is entering a defining decade. Demand is rising sharply, grids are struggling to keep pace, and the rapid growth of electric mobility is exposing deep structural weaknesses. Households are facing mounting uncertainty over costs and supply.
At the same time, interest in decentralised systems, such as solar, batteries, heat pumps, EV chargers, is skyrocketing. The missing link is a scalable infrastructure that can bring these solutions to millions of homes without delays, complexity, or steep upfront costs. This is the gap Cloover set out to solve.
Financing to reshape the market
Berlin-based clean energy startup Cloover is preparing to announce a $1.2 billion financing round, combining debt and equity, to accelerate residential energy independence across Europe.
Alongside this, the company has already secured $22 million in Series A equity, led by MMC Ventures and QED Investors, with participation from Lowercarbon Capital, BNVT Capital, Bosch Ventures, Centrotec, and Earthshot Ventures. The $1.2 billion debt facility supplied by a major European bank will directly fund customer and installer financing on the platform.
Cloover also operates with the backing of a €300 million European Investment Fund guarantee, enabling scalable, low-cost financing for clean energy installations. In total, the company now has more than $1.3 billion in debt and over $30 million in equity committed.
Prior to its latest financing commitment, Cloover drew a $114 million seed round in 2024 and €7 million in pre-seed funding in 2023 for its renewable energy platform.
The company plans to expand into France, Italy, the UK, and Austria, deepen its workflow automation, and scale financing products tailored for decentralised systems.
Cloover grew revenue more than 8x in 2025 while remaining profitable, nearing $100 million in sales. It expects $500 million in 2026 and $1 billion in 2027, reflecting soaring demand for distributed energy solutions driven by AI-powered consumption, mobility electrification, and grid instability.
Founders who noticed a structural break
Cloover was founded in 2023 by Jodok Betschart, Peder Broms, and Valentin Gönczy, who spent months interviewing hundreds of installers across Europe. Everywhere, they heard the same frustrations, such as fragmented software, manual processes, slow banks, and financing bottlenecks that delayed installations or priced customers out.
The founders realised that while other sectors, such as automotive, benefit from vast lending ecosystems and digital infrastructure, decentralised energy had neither. Installers needed capital embedded into their workflow, and consumers needed financing that reflected long-term energy savings rather than traditional credit scoring. This formed the foundation of Cloover’s operating system.
Building the operating system for energy independence
Cloover integrates workflow management, procurement, financing, energy optimisation, and risk detection under a single platform. Installers can offer financing at the point of sale, reduce administrative drag, and shorten cash cycles. On average, partners report 30% incremental revenue by unlocking new customer segments.
Homeowners benefit from lower upfront costs and 20% to 30% savings through optimised energy performance. Cloover’s underwriting evaluates real energy savings, and the platform even pre-finances public subsidies to increase affordability.
Our view: Cloover is emerging as one of Europe’s most consequential energy infrastructure builders. By connecting manufacturers, installers, investors, and households in a unified ecosystem, it mirrors how software once transformed e-commerce—this time reshaping the path to clean, resilient, and independent energy.
“With this $1.2 billion commitment, we’re enabling households to become energy independent, without the friction of upfront costs or complex loan applications. Our AI operating system connects stakeholders across the value chain and revolutionizes how energy independence becomes the new norm” said Jodok Betschart, Co-Founder & CEO at Cloover.
“Cloover is not just about financing. We’re building the backbone for energy independence. We are creating the Shopify of Energy: a platform that equips manufacturers, installers, households, and investors with the tools to grow, collaborate, and deliver distributed energy at scale,” added Valentin Gönczy, Co-Founder & CPO at Cloover.
“Cloover is tackling one of the largest and most structurally important opportunities in the European energy transition. What truly sets them apart is execution: in 2025 the team delivered outstanding commercial progress while building the foundations of a scalable platform business. Jodok, Peder and Valentin have assembled an exceptional team with deep expertise across energy, software, and credit, and we’re excited to back them as they scale Cloover into a category-defining company,” said Oliver Richards, General Partner at MMC Ventures.
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