Ore Energy raises $43 million to unlock renewable baseload power for the AI era. * Ore Energy is building a fully European-manufactured battery to solve one of the biggest bottlenecks in the energy transition: multi-day storage * Europe already wastes an estimated 72 TWh of renewable energy due to grid bottlenecks, equivalent to Austria's annual electricity demand, with losses projected to rise to as much as 410 TWh annually by 2040, according to the European Commission's Joint Research Centre * Its iron-air batteries store power for 100 hours at 10x lower cost per unit of energy capacity than lithium-ion, without the need for critical raw minerals like lithium or cobalt AMSTERDAM, NL AND DELFT, NL, August 4, 2026 (Newswire.com) - As demand for electricity from AI, manufacturing, and the energy transition accelerates worldwide, Ore Energy has raised $43 million in Series A funding from Plural and HV to scale its iron-air battery technology. Ore's batteries, designed to store renewable electricity for up to 100 hours, can solve one of the biggest barriers to the energy transition: affordable, long-duration energy storage. The funding brings the company's total raised to more than $61 million. Founded by Aytac Yilmaz (CEO), Rutil Özdemir (COO) and Yaiza Gonzalez Garcia (CSO), Ore Energy's iron-air batteries deliver energy by rusting and unrusting iron electrodes. Built using abundant, low-cost materials including iron, water, and air, its batteries can be manufactured through a fully European supply chain, without relying on expensive imported critical raw materials like lithium or cobalt. The fully scalable, modular design delivers a plug-and-play energy storage system at 10x lower cost per unit of energy capacity than lithium-ion for long-duration storage, making renewable electricity affordable and available on demand. Solving the energy storage challenge Global electricity demand from data centres is set to more than double to around 945 TWh by 2030, with AI-optimised data centres projected to more than quadruple over the same period. AI training and inference cause large, rapid swings in power demand, making storage critical to keeping reliable electricity supplies. Wind and solar are now the cheapest sources of new electricity generation, but their outputs are inherently volatile: generation exceeds grid capacity when conditions are favourable, and fall short during low-wind or wintery periods, with no adequate way to store the surplus for later use. This mismatch between generation and demand is already costing Europe real money. The UK has already spent almost £6 billion ($8bn) paying renewable generators to switch off since 2011. Without investment in grid infrastructure, wasted wind energy alone is projected to cost the UK £8bn ($10.7bn) a year by 2030. Across Europe, around 72 TWh of renewable electricity is wasted every year through grid bottlenecks, enough to be worth almost €7bn ($8bn) at current wholesale electricity prices. Pressure is intensifying, with European data centre electricity demand projected to increase by 45TWh by 2030 at exactly the moment the continent needs to accelerate its industrial and energy transition. Ore's iron-air batteries solve this challenge by storing renewable electricity for up to 100 hours before feeding it back to the grid whenever demand requires. Co-located with wind farms, the batteries reduce curtailment - when renewable energy is wasted because the grid can't take it - make better use of existing grid infrastructure and provide the firm, round-the-clock dispatchable output needed to replace gas. Ore Energy has already signed a 1GWh deal with Budget Thuis, a challenger Dutch-based energy and telecoms utility supplier, whilst pilot projects with French utility EDF have demonstrated how its technology performs in real-world utility settings. Powering the world's new industrial age The new funding, which included participation from Positron Ventures, will enable Ore to establish its first manufacturing facility, ahead of its target for gigawatt hour-scale manufacturing in 2028. The facility will validate manufacturing at scale, supported by team expansion across manufacturing, commercial and operational roles. By 2035, Ore Energy aims to make iron-air the standard grid infrastructure for long-duration energy storage and power the world's new industrial age through firm, renewable baseload power. Aytac Yilmaz, Co-founder and CEO of Ore Energy, said: "Expensive energy is the biggest barrier to growth, something European businesses and politicians know only too well. Affordable, renewable baseload power is the foundation for the next generation of manufacturing, AI infrastructure and industrial growth globally. Ore Energy's long-duration storage is an essential part of that future. This funding will help us build our first manufacturing facility and put us on the path to gigawatt hour-scale production, making renewable electricity available whenever and wherever needed." Ian Hogarth, partner at Plural, said: "Long-duration energy storage is one of the biggest unsolved challenges in the energy transition, and unlocking it will transform how we power industry, scale AI data centres and drive economic growth. Aytac, Rutil and the team have combined world-class science with exceptional execution to make iron-air batteries commercially viable, whilst providing a critical technology, not just for Europe but as an important export technology too. By getting so much more out of every unit of wind we already have, Ore Energy has the potential to become one of the world's most important energy companies." Maxi Pethö-Schramm, principal at HV, said: "If we want to meet the future energy demands of AI data centres while providing European industry with affordable, reliable baseload power, then we need long-duration storage. Only then will Europe have the means to compete in the complex, energy-intensive sectors that will define the continent's future. Ore has developed a practical, scalable solution that combines breakthrough technology with a clear path to manufacturing at scale and we're excited to back a team with the ambition to bring this critical infrastructure to market." Media Contacts About Ore Energy: Ore Energy develops grid-scale iron-air batteries for long-duration energy storage. Using only iron, water, and air - no lithium or cobalt - its systems store energy safely for up to 100 hours and can be built using a fully European supply chain. Ore Energy's mission is to make low-cost renewable energy available to grids and data centres at all times, closing the multi-day gaps that still force the use of fossil fuels. Follow Ore Energy on LinkedIn and visit oreenergy.com. About Plural: Plural is an early-stage investment fund that backs the most ambitious founders on a mission to change the world through technology. Plural launched in June 2022 with the aim to give serious founders in Europe investors with experience to match their ambition. Based in Tallinn, Estonia, and London, UK, Plural's mission is to have GDP-level impact on Europe, address systemic risks and reduce the opportunity gap worldwide through the companies it backs. https://pluralplatform.com HV is one of the leading early-stage and growth investors in Europe. With nine fund generations in 26 years and €2.8 bn in managed assets, HV is one of the continent's most active investors. The investment team has many years of experience in identifying European startups with great potential for success. In addition to international success stories like Flix, Zalando, Delivery Hero, Sumup, and Depop, innovation leaders such as Quantum Systems, Marvel Fusion, Sennder, Neura Robotics, Enpal, and Isar Aerospace, are also part of the portfolio. HV has invested in more than 290 internet and technology companies, supporting startups with ticket sizes ranging from €0.5m to €60m. It is one of Europe's few venture capital firms that can finance startups through all growth phases. HV has a team of more than 60+ investment and operations professionals who provide a variety of perspectives and expertise across the venture capital landscape. https://www.hvcapital.com/

Ore Energy, a Dutch startup developing iron-air battery technology, has raised $43m in Series A funding led by Plural. The company plans to use the capital to scale its long-duration energy storage solution. Investors are backing the technology as critical infrastructure for Europe's artificial intelligence ambitions. Iron-air batteries offer an alternative approach to energy storage, which is becoming increasingly important as demand for reliable power supply grows alongside AI development. The funding round reflects growing investor interest in next-generation battery technologies that can provide longer-duration storage than traditional lithium-ion solutions.

Fleek raises $25M from eBay and Vinted's early backer to rebuild secondhand fashion's supply chain. July 8, 2026 * Fleek, an AI startup working to digitise the secondhand fashion supply chain, has raised $25 million in Series B funding led by Burda Principal Investments, an early investor in Vinted. * This round brings Fleek's total funding to $45 million, with participation from eBay, FJ Labs, H14, Andreessen Horowitz, HV Capital, and Y Combinator. * Fleek's AI model, trained on millions of transactions, can grade and price secondhand clothing from just a smartphone photo. The platform connects over 2,000 suppliers with more than 50,000 buyers in more than 100 countries. A piece of clothing donated in London might travel thousands of miles to a sorting warehouse in Karachi, Dubai, or Delhi, where it is graded, priced, and routed by hand. Up to 24 billion items go through this process each year. Fleek, based in London, wants to use AI to replace manual sorting and has raised $25 million to accelerate the transition. "Most people have no idea what happens to a piece of clothing after they part with it. It travels thousands of miles, gets sorted by hand in a warehouse in Karachi, and finds its way back to a vintage shop in London or New York, if it's lucky. We started Fleek because that system is broken, the market it serves is exploding, and nobody is building the technology and infrastructure to fix it," says Abhi Arora, co-founder and CEO of Fleek. Why an early Vinted investor is investing in infrastructure. Burda Principal Investments, an early Vinted investor since its 2015 Series C round, the marketplace has since reached an €8 billion valuation, as of April 2026, led Fleek's Series B New investors include eBay, FJ Labs, and H14, while Andreessen Horowitz, HV Capital, and Y Combinator returned. The round brings Fleek's total funding to $45 million, up from $20.4 million raised in 2024. Investors are increasingly looking at the infrastructure behind resale marketplaces instead of the marketplaces themselves. Apps like Vinted, Depop, and Whatnot, valued at $11.5 billion as of October 2025, need a steady, accurately priced supply of secondhand goods, and that inventory is still checked by hand today, with inconsistent standards and little pricing transparency. "We backed Vinted when secondhand fashion was still considered niche. We know what it takes to build a platform that scales in this market. From its growing supplier network to the technology behind it, Fleek is building the infrastructure the next generation of fashion will rely on," says Julian von Eckartsberg, Burda's managing director for Europe. How Fleek's grading model works. Fleek was founded in London in 2021 by Arora and Sanket Agarwal, inspired by the difficulty of finding reliable inventory during pandemic-era supply chain disruption. The company, which also has offices in Pakistan and India, built a vision-language model called Fleek Sort, trained on years of secondhand transaction data, that identifies, grades, and prices clothing from a single photo or video. Graders in Pakistan, India, and Dubai already use it, with pilots underway in the UK, Europe, and the US. "There's more data locked inside the global secondhand supply chain than almost any other market, yet historically very little of it has been captured. We've built the world's first AI trained specifically to understand secondhand inventory - what it is, what it's worth, who wants it and where demand exists," Agarwal says. Once graded, the items list automatically on Fleek's own marketplace, where AI handles pricing and buyer matching. Fleek says it has no direct competitor focused on wholesale secondhand grading, though it sits upstream of consumer-facing authentication platforms like Vestiaire Collective and GOAT. A related supply-side startup is Finnish Bought, which raised $1.5 million in 2025 to unlock resale inventory sitting unlisted in consumers' inboxes. The unresolved number. Fleek connects more than 2,000 wholesale suppliers and graders with more than 50,000 buyers across more than 100 countries, and says it has kept more than 12 million garments in circulation. The secondhand apparel market is valued at over $200 billion today. The infrastructure side of resale has largely been an afterthought next to the consumer apps built on top of it. Burda's investment suggests investors now see sorting and grading, not the marketplace, as the more defensible thing to own. The open question is whether Fleek can digitise a $200 billion offline industry fast enough to keep pace with the rate at which secondhand clothing continues to enter it.