US-Based Odyssey Raises $5.34m to Expand Distributed RE

US-based Odyssey Energy Solutions has announced that it has raised $5.34 million in new funding led by Equal Ventures, a venture capital investment firm based in New York,. The participating investors include Twelve Below, Abstract Ventures, Founder Collective, and MCJ Collective.

Odyssey offers an end-to-end solution to finance, build and operate distributed energy projects at scale across the globe. Odyssey claims to be a first-of-its-kind platform to unlock massive scale in renewables in emerging markets.

Odyssey enables developers to plan, finance, build, and operate distributed renewable energy (DRE) projects at scale with its platform, democratizing access to leading edge technology, better financing and lower cost equipment procurement. Odyssey said that it’s currently catalyzing more than $1billion of finance into the DRE sector, with more than 1500 companies using the platform across five continents.

Emily McAteer, CEO, Odyssey Energy Solutions, said, “The DRE market is fragmented, lacking the data and standardization required for large-scale investments. By solving for core frictions in one platform, our solution provides the tools to build investable portfolios and truly unlock scale.”

The new funding will be used to launch new financial products for DRE in emerging markets aimed at infusing more private capital into the markets, scale Odyssey’s aggregated procurement platform and advance remote monitoring, control, and analytics technologies for a wide array of asset types.

“Emerging markets represent one of the most economically and environmentally impactful areas to address the challenges, but have thus far been hindered by access to technology and capital. We are thrilled to partner with this first-class team to accelerate the global energy transition in a way that no one else has done before,” said Rick Zullo, GM, Equal Ventures.

Odyssey’s CEO, Emily McAteer, has more than 15 years of experience in energy management and DRE and co-founder Cathy Zoi is former Assistant Secretary for Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy at the U.S. Department of Energy.

Since 2019, Odyssey has announced a series of major electrification projects on the platform. In particular, Odyssey is the platform for the Nigeria Electrification Project (NEP), a $550 million initiative of the Federal Government of Nigeria financed by the World Bank and the African Development Bank.