The UK startup behind a system to make inexperienced vitality at sea utilizing hi-tech crusing vessels has secured £4.65 million in seed capital, enabling it to scale and realise its ambition to start out vessel manufacturing subsequent 12 months.
The seed funding spherical for DRIFT Power was led by enterprise capital agency Octopus Ventures, with assist from Blue Motion Accelerator.
DRIFT mentioned it’s creating renewable vitality partnerships that may profit coastal and island communities world wide. Ben Medland, Founder and CEO, just lately attended the United Nations’ 4th Worldwide Convention on Small Island Growing States, the place he mentioned he noticed big alternative for the corporate to assist the vitality transition for the 65+ million people who dwell throughout greater than 1000 islands on the planet.
He mentioned the funding “allows us to drive with momentum into the subsequent part of our mission. We are going to work intently with Octopus and our advisory groups to deliver our imaginative and prescient of ‘Oceans of Power’ to life with that all-important first net-positive ship.”
Mat Munro, Investor at Octopus Ventures, mentioned: “We’re extremely enthusiastic about DRIFT and the staff’s potential to cleared the path in creating a really revolutionary supply of renewable vitality. At Octopus Ventures, we’re backing the businesses constructing a sustainable planet, and DRIFT’s ambitions are precisely what we’re on the lookout for. We will’t anticipate the day its first vessel units out on its maiden voyage.”
George Northcott, Co-Founding father of Blue Motion Accelerator added: “Blue Motion Accelerator’s mission is to assist scale groundbreaking applied sciences that protect marine environments and assist coastal-dependent communities. DRIFT is the final word instance of that – creating a brand new class of cell renewable vitality from the world’s seas and delivering it to the place it’s wanted – from island nation communities to energy hungry ports. We’re thrilled to be supporting them as they construct their first vessels and produce a imaginative and prescient to life.”
DRIFT Power has additionally just lately been awarded funding from Innovate UK, the UK’s innovation company, by its Investor Partnership Programme, which is designed to drive funding into high- progress, revolutionary UK corporations engaged on cutting-edge know-how. The grant will help the analysis and growth programme and speed up the design technique of the primary vessel.
