Amperesand, a startup providing power grid infrastructure solutions, has announced raising $12.45 million in a seed financing round co-led by Temasek’s deep tech early-stage investment platform Xora Innovation and US-based Material Impact.
In a statement, Amperesand said that TDK Ventures, the venture arm of Japan’s TDK Corporation as well as California-headquartered Foothill Ventures joined the round.
“Amperesand is poised to be among the first globally to market a compact, modular, and highly scalable solid-state transformer (SST) for applications in multi-megawatt DC fast charging for electric vehicles, microgrids, and data centres,” read the statement.
The new capital is set to help the company, which was established in 2023, to industrialise and manufacture its technology at scale while building its executive team.
The SST technology has been developed in Singapore’s Nanyang Technology University for the past seven years, by a team of experts that includes Amperesand’s co-founder and vice president of engineering Anshuman Tripathi. The company said that its SST technology has also been tested on Singapore’s power grid.
The company explained that its product is meant to address the ongoing transformation in how electricity is produced, distributed, and stored—led by the shift to renewable energy, electric vehicles and newer storage solutions,
“However, this transition faces a hurdle as these innovations primarily use direct current (DC) power, which is at odds with the existing grid infrastructure dominated by older transformer technology designed for alternating current (AC) systems,” it said.
Speaking on how investors have helped Amperesand’s journey, Anshuman said: “This would not have been achievable without exceptional support from Xora’s team, crucial in getting our company off the ground, and the shared vision with Material Impact and our entire investor syndicate”.
Meanwhile, Phil Inagaki, managing director at Xora Innovation said: “The time for commercialisation of SSTs is now right from both a technology and market readiness perspective,” he said.