System integrator Powin Energy has raised US$135 million from its existing shareholders Trilantic and Energy Impact Partners and new investor GIC, just weeks after a Samsung subsidiary took a minority stake.
Singaporean wealth fund GIC joins Trilantic Energy Partners North America, Energy Impact Partners (EIP) and recent investor Samsung Venture Investment Corporation. Powin Energy said the investment will help its continued growth and international expansion.
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“We are grateful for this investment from GIC, Trilantic North America, and EIP. We appreciate the vote of confidence and believe that it demonstrates both the market leadership position of our business and our customers’ trust in us to change the way they generate, transmit, and distribute electricity,” said Geoff Brown, CEO of Powin.
Evercore served as financial advisor to Powin for this transaction and Kirkland & Ellis LLP acted as legal counsel. Sidley Austin LLP served as legal counsel to GIC in relation to the transaction.
The news comes just weeks after Powin Energy sold a minority stake to Samsung Venture Investment Corporation (SVIC), the investment arm of the large South Korea-headquartered conglomerate.
That deal was characterised as having been done by SVIC on behalf of Samsung C&T, its engineering, procurement and construction (EPC) firm. Samsung C&T has designated Powin as a preferred storage provider and will bid for new projects with the Oregon-headquartered firm as the BESS hardware and software provider.
The investment by GIC, Trilantic and EIP is not the only recent transaction in the sector that has come at an unexpected time, just a year and a half after the latter two invested and a few weeks after a SVIC’s investment.
European gigafactory company Northvolt recently raised over US$1 billion whilst also discussing an IPO within the next two years, while ‘CO2 battery’ company Energy Dome raised US$11 million in between its recent series A and an upcoming series B.
Powin was the fifth-largest system integrator globally in 2021 according to IHS Markit’s ranking, which gave it a 5% share of projects deployed. It has developed over 2GW of BESS projects to-date and has a total pipeline of some 10GWh.