PIONIX GmbH, a leading pioneer in open-source software for the ecosystem around EV charging, today announced it has raised more than €5 million in an oversubscribed Seed financing round. The round was led by yabeo Impact AG and Pale blue dot, with Vireo Ventures, MobilityFund and Axeleo Capital also participating in the round. The funding will contribute to establish the company’s open-source stack EVerest as a world-wide path to a more standardized and efficient development in the EV charging industry.
Founded in 2021, PIONIX GmbH, set its mission to accelerate the developments in the young and less standardized industry of EV charging. Experiences of the founders from other industries (Drone startup MAVinci, bought by Intel) about the power of open-source technology have led PIONIX to initiate the open-source software stack EVerest. EVerest is aiming to establish a standard for an unified EV eco system by eliminating the pain points like lacking compatibility, resource expenditure and innovation hurdles.
"Our mission is to boost the development of the EV charging industry – to make it quicker, cost-efficient and more innovative. With the funding, EVerest can become the unified and modular platform for EV charging technology. We will grow in a rather global position and enable even more features.” said Dr. Marco Möller, CEO of PIONIX GmbH. “It follows a similar approach like Android where we have a well developed widely used core which is customized by many companies out there. Less complexity, more standardization and lower costs for the entire EV charging business."
EVerest is part of LF Energy, the open-source foundation focused on the power systems sector, hosted within The Linux Foundation. Formed in 2018, LF Energy’s aim is to spur the uptake of digital technologies within the electricity sector and adjoining sectors using open source software and practices. Many major tech companies have partnered with LF Energy to achieve the goals set.
To achieve emission reductions in the coming years, also by providing a wide and easy to use charging ecosystem, fundamental steps need to be made. Today many manufacturers of EV charging stations develop their own proprietary software, although products need to work in an eco-system with other brands, cars and energy networks. PIONIX's solution is offering a standardized core, which helps develop products quicker, save costs and make sure new products are compatible with the entire grid of players.
"We see the potential for PIONIX to be an absolute growth accelerator for charging stations. PIONIX's solution can thus have a decisive impact on the global spread of electromobility. It is precisely this potential that we want to leverage together with the experienced founding team," said Christian Dietsche, Managing Director at yabeo Impact AG, the early-stage investor from Munich that focuses on sustainable business models.
“Thanks to their great strengths and advantages, open source projects are also becoming increasingly important in the automotive industry. And not without reason. Open source has the transformative speed and disruptive power to become the game changer for mobility transformation. Pionix's successful financing round is further proof of this,” adds PIONIX advisor Peter Mertens, automotive industry veteran (ex-CTO of AUDI and VOLVO).
Since its founding, PIONIX has successfully developed and distributed applications for different component and charging station manufacturers like Texas Instruments or Mahle. This pioneering work also led to receiving the Make it matter Award hosted by EWS Schönau, the award >SMART> GREEN ACCELERATOR, and the Startup of the Year 2022 award at Automobilwoche Kongress (organized by McKinsey).
About PIONIX
PIONIX is the leading open-source pioneer for EV charging technology in Europe. In 2021 PIONIX initiated EVerest, the first freely accessible and holistic software solution for the booming market of e-mobility.
The open-source software stack EVerest is the perfect solution to develop, optimize, and unify electric vehicle charging infrastructure. It is the answer to the incompatibility between different charging systems. The company supports its business customers to apply EVerest and customized it to their needs.
The company is headquartered in Bad Schönborn, Germany. Its customers include charging station manufacturers, component developers and energy utilities in Europe and North America.
