Insolight raises CHF4.6 million

With a single infrastructure, Insolight’s insolagrin enables both agricultural and electricity production on the same land. The system provides protection for the crops and controls light transmission to plants through dynamic shading while harvesting excess light into electricity.

The funds of the financing round are instrumental to deploy Insolight’s first large-scale insolagrin installations (hectare size / megawatts scale), serving first berry growers in Switzerland and France. The company then aims to replicate those first agrivoltaic installations globally and increase the number of targeted crops. The round will also support the commercial scale-up and the development of the existing projects’ pipeline, targeting multiple tens of millions of Euros in the next two years.

The round was led by Demeter, a major European venture capital player in agritech and cleantech industries based in Paris, and Smart Energy Innovation Fund, the Corporate Venture Capital Fund of Energie 360°, a Zurich-based sustainable energy and mobility service provider. They were joined by the existing investors Verve Ventures and Zürcher Kantonalbank, who are continuously supporting the company’s growth. Cyrille Cabaret, Partner at Demeter, will join the Insolight board.

Metin Zerman, Investment Manager at the Smart Energy Innovation Fund of Energie 360°, comments, “the simultaneous use of land for agricultural crop production and PV power generation is a future market with enormous potential that has not yet been fully utilized today. We are very proud to have found a leading provider for Agri PV in Insolight and are very much looking forward to working with the team and the distinguished group of investors to tackle this huge market.”

Laurent Coulot, CEO and co-founder at Insolight says, “the round has a very interesting setup for our core markets: not only we bring agritech and energy experts onboard, but we are also enlarging our network in France and the DACH region.”

(Press release / SK)