A Munich-based software company thinks it has found gold in the unglamorous business of industrial battery management, and investors are taking notice.
Furo, a two-year-old startup that helps factories and warehouses squeeze more value from their energy storage systems, closed a $4 million seed round announced September 10–11 led by TQ Ventures. Sandberg Bernthal Venture Partners, Neo, and CDTM Venture Capital also participated. The company now manages battery operations across more than 6,000 industrial sites in Germany and across Europe—a footprint that has grown substantially since its founding.
The premise is straightforward: Most companies install batteries to cut costs, not to become energy market experts. But optimizing when to charge, discharge, or trade power back to the grid requires navigating fluctuating electricity prices, weather forecasts, and byzantine tariff structures. Furo's software handles that calculus automatically, forecasting conditions up to 48 hours out and juggling multiple revenue streams—peak shaving, self-consumption, arbitrage trading, grid fee reduction, and backup power.
"Our customers did not buy a battery in order to own a technology, but in order to lower their electricity bill," said Lena Sophia Voß, one of Furo's three co-founders. She estimates that inflexible energy demand costs industrial companies hundreds of billions of dollars globally each year, though pinning down an exact figure remains elusive.
Furo claims its platform can reduce electricity costs by as much as 40 percent, a number that has caught the attention of Deutsche Bahn, solar installer Enpal, and Sonnen, the residential battery company now owned by Shell. Ben Rohloff, who oversees commercial and industrial operations at Enpal, said Furo delivers "full transparency into what our battery is actually doing and why"—a degree of visibility that many legacy energy management systems struggle to provide.
Rather than selling directly to factory owners, Furo distributes through a network of more than 800 installers, project developers, storage manufacturers, and utilities. It's a channel strategy that mirrors enterprise software playbooks: let partners handle customer relationships while Furo becomes the invisible intelligence layer. The approach appears to be working. More than 800 companies now use the platform, and Furo counts BayWa r.e., Segen Solar, IBC Solar, and FENECON among its listed partners.
The company offers three software modules. PLAN helps size battery systems and model financial returns before installation. OPERATE manages real-time dispatch once systems go live. FLEX automates energy trading for clients who want to participate in wholesale markets. The platform supports storage systems starting at 100 kilowatts and either integrates with existing energy management infrastructure or replaces it outright.
Voß, along with co-founders Leonie Wagner and Simon Wittner, met at CDTM, a joint innovation program run by Ludwig Maximilian University and the Technical University of Munich. The trio had stints at Apple, Google X, Stanford, UC Berkeley, and BCG before returning to Europe to build what they initially called Lumera Energy. They rebranded to Furo last spring—a name that evokes speed and momentum, fitting for a company moving quickly in a crowded market.
According to TechCrunch, the startup structured itself as a Delaware C corporation, a common choice for venture-backed companies eyeing eventual U.S. expansion, though it operates primarily from Munich with a lean team of around 13 employees.
Furo enters a competitive landscape thick with European battery software startups. Hamburg's Suena raised an €8 million Series A last year for AI-powered trading. Cologne-based Einklang secured €2.2 million earlier this year, while Berlin's Scale Energy pulled in €2 million in a seed round last year. Dealroom data suggests Furo's $4 million round ranks in the top 10 percent of energy seed deals by size, a signal that investors see consolidation potential in a fragmented sector.
"Lena, Leonie and Simon understand the European energy market at an extraordinary level of depth," said Schuster Tanger, co-founding partner at TQ Ventures. That expertise may prove critical as regulatory environments shift across the continent and utilities experiment with new tariff structures designed to balance intermittent renewable generation.
Earlier this month, Furo announced a partnership with LUOX Energy to integrate quarter-hour dynamic tariff procurement and direct marketing into its platform. Pilot projects are already underway, the company said.
Voß told TechCrunch the team believes it can move faster in Europe than it would have in the United States, at least for now. The comment hints at a broader dynamic in climate tech: While American venture capital still flows more freely, European regulatory frameworks and energy market designs sometimes offer clearer paths to near-term revenue. Whether that advantage persists as both markets evolve remains an open question.
For the moment, Furo plans to plow its fresh capital into software development, expanding into additional European markets, and growing its team. The company declined to disclose its valuation—a standard move for early-stage startups navigating competitive fundraising environments.
