Early Revoluters raise $78m for energy startup Tesseract

After months in stealth mode, renewable energy company Tesseract has emerged with a bang.

Founded by two early Revolut employees, Alan Chang and Charles Orr have now raised $78m for their new startup.

Huge names in the startup world, CEO Chang was Revolut’s chief revenue officer, employee number five and widely thought of as CEO Nik Storonosky’s number two, while COO Orr was strategy lead at the company for two years.

The team has said it is confident it can “upend the energy industry” in the same way it disrupted the banking industry at Revolut.

The round was led by Balderton and Lakestar, and also included Accel, Creandum, Lowercarbon Capital, Ribbit and BoxGroup in addition to strategic angels including DST managing partner Tom Stafford and even Formula 1 champion Nico Rosberg.

Aiming to shake up the energy market, Tesseract says it will decentralise the right to power, providing commission-free and cheaper energy to its customers.

“What we want is basically to take this trend of decentralization and democratisation into energy, and at the same time, to accelerate the renewable energy transition,” Chang told AltFi.

“Basically taking what we learned from Revolut and building that into energy.”

Chang explained that looking at fintech, where access for retail is almost the same as institutional investors, the same cannot be said for energy.

“The biggest companies have always been the energy companies [...] these huge huge energy companies that make so much money, and yet if you look at the product, to the customer experience, it's not that great,” he said.

According to Tesseract, instead of installing costly solar panels, customers will be able to buy a ‘virtual’ solar panel or wind turbine, which it says could cut their bills by “as much as 100 per cent”.

They are aiming to produce a fully renewable solution that, as Chang put it, is “a win for the environment, a win for the shareholders, a win for business and also a win for the customer”.

“Investment in innovation and green energy is minimal and a fig leaf for business as usual,” Orr said.

“As prices across Europe rise, we are seeing opportunities to challenge this establishment, and we have the technology and vision to take on this industry.”

Chang and Orr have brought on a number of energy industry experts to support the business, as well as several former Revoluters, including Felix Jamestin, who launched Revolut Junior; Rory Keohane, creative lead; and Nik Denisenko, lead backend engineer.