Europe’s energy transition is usually discussed in enormous numbers: gigawatts of solar, millions of heat pumps, national climate targets and billions of euros in infrastructure.
For a homeowner, however, the decision can become much smaller and much more uncomfortable.
A family can understand exactly why solar panels, a battery or a heat pump makes sense and still stop when the installer explains what it will cost today. At almost the same moment, the installer may be wondering whether there is enough working capital to buy the equipment, carry another project and wait to be paid.
Cloover has built itself around making sure neither side has to walk away.
The Berlin-based company has secured a new $100 million financing facility, increasing its total financing capacity to more than $1.3 billion. The additional firepower follows a $22 million Series A announced earlier this year. Since then, CEO and co-founder Jodok Betschart says Cloover’s revenue has increased fourfold, the business has become profitable and its revenue run rate has reached roughly $350 million.
Those numbers are impressive, but they make more sense when viewed through the people Cloover chose to serve.
Jodok Betschart says small and midsized businesses carry out more than 85% of residential energy installations. These installers are often the human face of Europe’s transition: the people entering homes, calculating what will fit on a roof, explaining batteries and heat pumps, ordering equipment and persuading families that the investment will eventually make financial sense. Yet their businesses can be squeezed by inventory costs and limited working capital, while customers may struggle to cover a large installation upfront.
“They’re doing a great job, but they’re often held back by limited working capital.”
Cloover began in 2023 with Jodok Betschart, Peder Broms and Valentin Gönczy, three founders whose backgrounds help explain the shape of the company they built. Jodok Betschart came from ESG finance before becoming a software entrepreneur. Peder Broms spent more than a decade in structured finance and credit markets, including running a multi-billion credit fund. Valentin Gönczy trained as a lawyer before moving into software and now leads product and operations.
Their answer to the financing problem gradually became much larger than financing itself.
Cloover now describes its product as an AI operating system for energy independence, connecting planning, financing, procurement, project management and energy management. Its platform is designed so installers can manage customer and project workflows while accessing financing and ordering equipment through the same infrastructure. More than 500 partners use the system, representing over €250 million in project volume and more than 10,000 projects. Cloover also reports 39% more revenue, 26% more customers and 32% greater efficiency among participating installers, figures that should be understood as company-reported performance metrics.
That is where the story begins to change.
Financing gets equipment into a home. Cloover increasingly wants to remain useful after the installer leaves.
Its energy product combines Lumina, a dynamic electricity tariff linked to exchange prices, with Pulse, an energy manager that coordinates solar panels, batteries, heat pumps and EV chargers. Rather than asking a homeowner to constantly watch electricity prices, Pulse can automatically shift consumption toward cheaper periods and increase the use of electricity generated at home. Cloover reports average customer savings of 40.1%, alongside another €110 to €190 annually in reduced grid fees in qualifying cases.
That matters because the economics of owning renewable-energy equipment are changing. Cloover’s own analysis argues that as fixed feed-in incentives are restructured, households will increasingly need to think about when electricity is consumed, stored or sold, not simply how much their panels produce. A solar system can remain on a roof for two decades while batteries, tariffs, grid rules and electricity markets evolve around it.
The company is therefore attempting to connect decisions that homeowners have historically made separately: how the equipment is financed, who installs it, how the project is managed and how the energy is used once the system is running.
The latest financing facility gives Cloover greater capacity at the first step. It is backed by guarantees from the European Investment Fund, which Betschart says can help extend financing to some customers who may find traditional lending harder to access, including self-employed homeowners and people over 60. The company is also preparing further expansion into markets including the UK, France and Poland and is averaging roughly 20,000 installations a year.
Cloover’s ambition is becoming clearer as those pieces come together.
It does not want to compete with the hundreds of installers putting equipment on roofs and into utility rooms. Its official strategy is to connect installers, manufacturers, energy companies, service providers and households through common software and financial infrastructure, allowing the businesses doing the physical work to handle more projects without carrying every operational burden themselves.
That creates a more interesting interpretation of the new $100 million.
Europe does not need to convince every homeowner to become an energy-market expert. It needs to make the complicated sequence behind a household energy upgrade feel ordinary enough that people can actually complete it.
Cloover is betting that the next chapter of the energy transition will be won not only by whoever builds the best solar panel, battery or heat pump, but by whoever makes saying “yes” to all of them financially and operationally possible.
