Swedish energy startup Elvy has raised €500m in a debt deal to finance its energy packages for Swedish and other European households.
Elvy, which launched 15 months ago, manages all aspects of a home’s energy system — from installation and maintenance of solar panels, heat pumps and batteries to grid management — for a fixed monthly fee of around SEK 2,500 (€230) over 15 years. By using them, cofounder and CEO Johan Outinen says that customers can reduce their energy costs by 20%, rising to as much as 50% in some cases.
The latest round of funding was raised from Swedish debt funding platform Scayl and one of its banking partners.
Elvy is now looking to use its new debt facility to invest in Swedish and international expansion. The startup, which had ambitious goals at the beginning of the year, had to put its rollout on hold as the debt funding was delayed by two and a half months, says Outinen.
“I didn’t want to use equity to finance the rollout of assets and we have been working really hard to find the right banking partner to do this. We have succeeded in establishing this debt facility, which is unique,” Outinen says.
“We’ve never heard of anyone who managed to get 100% backing through debt financing for these kinds of projects.”
Elvy had previously looked to Germany as its first international market but not anymore. Instead, the startup has had positive talks with large energy companies in the far eastern part of Europe about partnering up.
“In eastern Europe, they’ve been largely dependent on Russian energy. But then Russia cut the ties, and all of a sudden they’ve become quite vulnerable,” he says. “What the large energy players are now thinking is that one way to create greater resilience is to redistribute the energy to smaller nodes.”
In those partnerships, Elvy is bringing both its software and its new debt facility. And by partnering with a larger player, Elvy is also cutting some of the risks of overseas expansion.
“Many people say that now we are going to expand to other countries and we are going to have a market explosion.
That’s what they do — and then they just crash and burn. Because there is a lot of money involved, there is a lot of risk and it is incredibly difficult.”
“I wouldn’t be surprised if we had a signed contract and gone live in a new country with a large player in the first half of 2026.”
With the delay in the debt financing, Elvy is missing its ambitious goals for 2025; instead of making up to SEK 500m (€46m) in revenue, it is now expecting to end up at about SEK 100m (€9m) for the financial year.
