Hamburg’s 1KOMMA5° has raised about €70m at a $1.35bn pre-money valuation, and it will spend more than €100m next year on the software that runs its home energy fleet.
German clean energy company 1KOMMA5° has raised about €70m in a round led by b2venture, the company said on 13 October. The money will go into Heartbeat AI, the platform behind its virtual power plant for households.
The round values the Hamburg company at $1.35bn, or about €1.2bn, before the new money. That’s 35 per cent higher than its previous round in July 2025.
Who invested
Marunouchi Innovation Partners joined as a new shareholder. It’s a Japanese growth fund that focuses on energy, AI and flexibility. Existing investors CalSTRS, eCapital, G2 Venture Partners and Eurazeo also took part. 1KOMMA5°’s wider group of backers includes Hamilton Lane, Porsche Ventures, 2150vc, Norrsken and Sabanci Climate Ventures.
The company says the round was oversubscribed. It was also the company’s first round to focus specifically on energy AI.
What Heartbeat AI does
Heartbeat AI links the equipment in customers’ homes. That includes batteries, heat pumps, solar panels, wallboxes and air conditioners. The software matches when power is made with when it’s used, and it sells surplus electricity on the exchange.
In total, the platform bundles more than 1GW of flexible capacity across five markets. On that basis, the company says it runs one of Europe’s largest virtual power plants for households.
In practice, a virtual power plant acts like one large power station. Yet it’s made of thousands of small devices spread across many homes. So the operator can shift demand or release stored power when the grid needs it. For a household, that can mean a battery charges when power is cheap and the system sells some back when prices rise.
Where the money goes
1KOMMA5° plans to invest more than €100m in Heartbeat AI in 2027. About €70m comes from the new round. The company will add a further €35m from its own funds. Philipp Schröder, chief executive and co-founder, said the new funds lift next year’s spending on the platform to that level.
That money will pay for AI development, new software tools and faster launches in new markets. Schröder also said the energy system needs a universal energy AI that works as an end-to-end operating system. Micha Grüber, chief financial officer and co-founder, called Heartbeat AI the driver of the company’s growth. He said that five years after its founding, the business is still speeding up its growth in all seven of its markets.
A profitable hardware base
The software sits on top of a large installation business. 1KOMMA5° employs about 3,000 people across about 80 sites in seven markets. It has installed more than 300,000 home energy systems, and Heartbeat AI manages more than 100,000 of them.
The company says its core hardware business makes a profit at the EBITDA level and generates cash. That measure counts earnings before interest, tax and write-downs. It also has no debt. For 2026, it expects organic revenue growth of 35 to 40 per cent.
New customer orders in Germany rose by almost 50 per cent in September, compared with a year earlier. In addition, banks have provided financing frameworks of up to €1.5bn for customers. Those sit off the company’s balance sheet.
Household flexibility draws capital
The deal adds to a run of investment in software that controls home energy kit. In September, Amber Electric raised €49m for home battery automation as it moved into Europe.
1KOMMA5° was founded in 2021. It has set a target to convert more than 1.5 million buildings to renewable energy supply by 2030. Each new home adds to the flexible capacity it can sell. So the growth of its virtual power plant will track how close it gets to that goal.
