By Nick Carey
LONDON (Reuters) – Denmark’s Monta, which develops software solutions for the electric vehicle charging industry, has expanded into the U.S. market and aims to have one million charging points connected to its platform within five years, the company said on Tuesday.
“We’ve been looking for a while at the U.S. market, which has been a couple of years behind Europe for EV adoption,” CEO Casper Rasmussen, who has moved to Miami to oversee the U.S. expansion, told Reuters. “It’s a very large market, so we want to be there when it starts picking up.”
Earlier this year Monta raised 80 million euros ($87 million) of Series B funding to increase research and development spending and expand its partner network.
The Copenhagen-based company has now raised a total of 130 million euros since its founding in 2020.
Monta’s platform helps charging companies manage their networks while also providing consumer-facing apps showing EV owners where to find and book chargers.
U.S. EV sales have soared by over 140% since the start of 2023, but additional growth may be hindered by a far slower and more uneven rollout of public charging stations.
The Biden administration has faced criticism for the slow deployment of EV charging stations from a $5-billion U.S. government programme created in 2021. In August, the administration announced $521 million in charging infrastructure grants.
Rasmussen said Monta had seen a growing number of U.S. regional charging companies set up to compete in this growing market.
“It’s a race on who gets the most set up and who can make a profitable business,” Rasmussen said. “Then in a few years, they’ll start consolidating.”
In 2023 Monta added some new strategic partners including Siemens and said its annual recurring revenue grew 600%, though it did not provide specific numbers.
(Reporting by Nick Carey; Editing by Mark Potter)
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