By Dipo Olowookere

About $1.222 billion in both equity financing and debt facility has been secured by a pan-European platform building an operating system for energy independence, Cloover.

The company, established in 2023 by Jodok Betschart, Peder Broms and Valentin Gönczy, recently received $22 million in Series A equity funding and a $1.2 billion loan to enable it build Artificial Intelligence (AI) operating system for its operations.

The globe is racing to secure its energy future as electricity demand rises, grids come under pressure, and households face growing uncertainty over costs and supply.

At the same time, demand for decentralized energy solutions like solar, batteries, heat pumps, and EV charging is surging. The missing piece has been infrastructure that can deliver these systems at scale.

Cloover is building the digital nervous system of the distributed energy economy. Its AI-powered platform integrates workflow management, financing, procurement, and energy optimization into one seamless operating system. It automates complex workflows, detects risks early, and empowers data-driven decisions from the first customer leading to long-term energy-management through Cloover’s EMS and dynamic tariffs.

Further, Cloover’s AI Finance co-pilot helps SME installers solve capital flow challenges along the whole value chain and improve liquidity to enable faster growth. By replacing disconnected tools and slow financing processes with one integrated system, Cloover enables installers to close more projects, move faster, and serve a broader customer base.

A statement from the energy firm disclosed that the equity round was led by MMC Ventures and QED Investors, with participation from Lowercarbon Capital, BNVT Capital, Bosch Ventures, Centrotec, and Earthshot Ventures. The debt facility was provided by a leading European bank to fund customer and installer financing on the platform.

Cloover also benefits from a €300 million guarantee from the European Investment Fund, which underpins its financing programs and enables scalable, low-cost capital for the energy transition. In total, Cloover has now raised more than $30 million in equity financing and secured over $1.3 billion in debt.

With the new capital, Cloover will expand into additional European markets and is considering France, Italy, the UK, and Austria, deepen its platform with further AI-driven workflow automation and financing products.

“With this $1.2 billion commitment, we’re enabling households to become energy independent, without the friction of upfront costs or complex loan applications. Our AI operating system connects stakeholders across the value chain and revolutionizes how energy independence becomes the new norm,” the chief executive of Cloover, Mr Betschart said.

Also, the chief product officer at Cloover, Valentin Gönczy, said, “Cloover is not just about financing – we’re building the backbone for energy independence. We are creating the Shopify of Energy: a platform that equips manufacturers, installers, households, and investors with the tools to grow, collaborate, and deliver distributed energy at scale.”

The General Partner at MMC Ventures, Oliver Richards, while commenting, said, “Cloover is tackling one of the largest and most structurally important opportunities in the European energy transition.

“What truly sets them apart is execution: in 2025 the team delivered outstanding commercial progress while building the foundations of a scalable platform business. Jodok, Peder and Valentin have assembled an exceptional team with deep expertise across energy, software, and credit, and we’re excited to back them as they scale Cloover into a category-defining company.”

By Adedapo Adesanya

Nigerians were plunged into a fresh electricity outage on Friday, January 23, as the national electricity grid suffered a total collapse, the first of such incident recorded in 2026.

Data from the Nigerian Independent System Operator (NISO) indicates that power generation fell to zero megawatts, while electricity supply to all 11 distribution companies dropped completely by about 1 pm.

The affected distribution firms include Benin, Eko, Enugu, Ikeja, Jos, Kaduna, Kano, Port Harcourt, Ibadan, Abuja and Yola, all of which recorded zero load allocation at the time of the collapse.

The incident comes months after a series of grid failures in 2025, with the most recent occurring on December 29.

According to reports, Nigeria’s grid collapsed a total of 12 times alone last year.

These repeated breakdowns have persisted despite ongoing efforts to strengthen and expand the country’s power infrastructure.

Part of such efforts came from NISO as it announced on November 9, 2025 that it has collaborated with the West African Power Pool Information and Coordination Centre to carry out a synchronisation test linking Nigeria’s grid with the broader West African electricity network.

Business Post observed that the grid collapse has led to a decline in economic productivity. A development which has the potential to affect the wider business environment, as many businesses have to resort to more expensive and environmentally unfriendly alternatives.

By Adedapo Adesanya

The World Bank has approved $50 million for a solar agricultural expansion project in Nigeria and five other African countries.

The country will benefit from the programme under Productive Use Financing Facility (PUFF), a financial initiative backed by the World Bank and the African Development Bank (AfDB) designed to accelerate the adoption of solar-powered equipment in Sub-Saharan Africa.

PUFF operating under Mission 300, a flagship programme backed by the World Bank and AfDB, which aims to mobilise tens of billions of Dollars to provide electricity access to 300 million Africans by 2030.

The expansion of PUFF-backed solutions is expected to have significant implications for Nigeria’s agricultural value chain, particularly in tackling post-harvest losses driven by inadequate storage, unreliable electricity, and limited access to modern processing tools.

The project disclosed through programme updates involving the World Bank and its partners, including the Rockefeller Foundation, will boost productivity, cut post-harvest losses, and expand clean energy access.

The funding will support the deployment of solar-powered cold rooms, refrigerators, water pumps, and grain mills across Kenya, Nigeria, Ethiopia, Sierra Leone, Uganda, and the Democratic Republic of Congo, with implementation led by Clasp, a Washington DC-based non-profit organisation focused on energy efficiency and clean energy access.

The World Bank-backed initiative has attracted strong backing from development partners, with officials indicating that the programme could expand further as country-level implementation gathers pace.

The Rockefeller Foundation, which has already committed $12 million to the scheme, has signalled that additional resources may be deployed over time.

“There is always the ability to scale that up,” the President of the Rockefeller Foundation, Mr Rajiv Shah, said on January 15 during a visit to a solar-powered cold storage facility operated by SokoFresh in Nairobi.

“There’ll be more resources country by country as well,” Mr Shah added.

“We finance the innovations, the new projects and the new ideas that governments, the World Bank and others can then take to scale,” he said during a separate visit to a farm facility using solar-powered cold rooms for export-bound produce.

Sub-Saharan Africa remains the epicentre of global energy poverty, accounting for more than 80 per cent of the world’s population without access to electricity.

An estimated 600 million people in the region still live without reliable power, a gap that continues to constrain economic growth and limit productivity for farmers and small businesses.

PUFF is designed to bridge the affordability gap by providing grants, subsidies, and technical assistance to suppliers and distributors of solar-powered equipment.

The programme focuses on enabling these suppliers to reach rural and off-grid communities that are typically excluded from conventional financing.

Between 2022 and 2024, PUFF completed a two-year pilot phase, supporting 24 businesses across the six participating countries.

With the pilot phase completed, the programme is now transitioning into full-scale deployment, backed by fresh World Bank financing and philanthropic capital.