TL;DR
Amsterdam-based Ore Energy raised $43M in Series A to scale iron-air batteries that store renewable power for up to 100 hours
Ore Energy, an Amsterdam-based startup building grid-scale iron-air batteries,has raised $43 million in Series A funding to scale a technology that can store renewable electricity for up to 100 hours. The round was led by Plural and HV, with participation from Positron Ventures, bringing the company’s total funding to $61 million.
The batteries work by rusting and unrusting iron electrodes, a reversible chemical reaction that charges and discharges the system using only iron, water, and air. Unlike lithium-ion cells, the technology requires no critical raw materials such as lithium or cobalt and can be manufactured through a fully European supply chain.
Founded in 2023 by Aytac Yilmaz, Rutil Ozdemir, and Yaiza Gonzalez Garcia, Ore Energy spun out of research at Delft University of Technology. Last year, it connected the first known grid-connected iron-air battery system at TU Delft’s Green Village testing ground, and has since completed pilot projects with French utility EDF under real-world conditions.
The company has already signed a 1 GWh deal with Budget Thuis, a Dutch energy and telecoms supplier, representing the largest iron-air storage agreement in continental Europe. The first phase of that deployment, covering 400 megawatt hours, is planned for delivery in 2028.
Ore Energy’s pitch rests on a problem that Europe has been trying to solve for years: how to store surplus wind and solar power for use during calm or cloudy periods. Lithium-ion batteries can cover gaps of a few hours, but the mismatch between renewable generation and grid demand often stretches across days, and that surplus is routinely wasted through curtailment.
The company is also positioning its technology as infrastructure for the AI era. Data centres are projected to more than double their global electricity consumption by 2030 and AI workloads create sharp, unpredictable swings in power demand that make storage even more critical
Ore Energy plans to use the funding to build its first manufacturing facility ahead of a target for gigawatt hour-scale production in 2028. The company is not the only one betting on iron-air: Form Energy, a US competitor, has raised well over a billion dollars for a similar chemistry, though Ore Energy says its fully European supply chain gives it an edge in a market increasingly wary of foreign dependencies.
Ian Hogarth, partner at Plural, said the company had the potential to become “one of the world’s most important energy companies” by extracting more value from existing wind capacity. Ore Energy’s own ambition is to make iron-air the standard grid infrastructure for long-duration storage by 2035.
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