The start-up is raising an ambitious series A round with Iris Capital, SWEN Capital Partners’ Blue Ocean fund alongside Polytechnique Ventures and key business angels to boost its global expansion
PARIS, Tuesday June 28th – Spinergie, the AI-based maritime platform, announced a €11 million series A investment round led by Iris Capital and Swen Capital’s Blue Ocean fund alongside key investors and business angels including Polytechnique Ventures, Sanne Manders, COO of Flexport, Jean-Gabriel Levon,cofounder of Ynsect, and Antoine de Chassy, founder of Loft Orbital.
Spinergie was founded by Jean Cristofari (CEO) and Louis Jozon (CPO), both experts in the offshore industry and fleet optimisation/management. Their solution already serves global maritime leaders including vessel managers and charterers companies such as Orsted, GE, Boskalis, Nexans to help them measure, benchmark and optimize their vessels’ performance and maritime operations to significantly improve their environmental impact. Spinergie’s technology relies on large volume of marine and vessel data processed with proprietary algorithms.
The funding round will accelerate Spinergie’s growth by deepening their market leadership position in offshore wind and enabling them to further expand into shipping sectors. This series A will thus support their R&D program, the recruitment of new team members, especially data scientists and developers,and grow their global client facing team with the opening of new offices in Asia, South America andMiddle East. The company will triple its team size by end of 2023.
A global market in urgent need of digitalization
Shipping emissions accounts approximately for 1 gigaton of CO2 per year and is expected to contribute to up to 17% of global GHG emissions by 2050 if it is not tackled quickly. Decarbonisation remains the biggest long-term challenge facing the industry and will require digital solutions to track and reduce emissions through operational efficiencies.
Still, most operations are followed up and managed on spreadsheets, but much stricter monitoring and reporting will be quickly needed to comply with new international regulations such as IMO DCS or EU MRV, and to stay on a pathway consistent with the Paris Agreement and the COP26 adopted in 2018.
“This announcement comes at a critical time for the industry as maritime carbon emissions continue to rise and new regulations will revolutionize the way industry leaders plan their operations. We have ambitious goals and are delighted to welcome Iris and Swen as our first investors in Spinergie. Theycombine Technology and Maritime environmental expertise to help us bring widescale change in how our industry operates.” commented Jean Cristofari, Spinergie CEO & Co-Founder.
“Spinergie built a unique platform that helps fleet, through AI, improve their environmental footprint while complying with new international regulations, as they go through a digitalization process that will modify their way of working globally. At Iris, we look for strong tech platforms capable of transforming their industry in an impactful way: Spinergie’s founding team demonstrated their incredible skills to address the challenges faced by maritime transport, a key sector for the years to come. We are really proud to support their international growth from this very first round”, said Julien-David Nitlech,Managing Partner at Iris Capital.
Mélanie Le Guen, Principal at Blue Ocean adds: “SWEN Capital Partners through its Blue Ocean fund is delighted to support Spinergie in pioneering digital solutions to help the maritime industry improve its operations, especially to reduce GHG emissions. If the shipping industry was a country, it would be the sixth largest polluter in the world. We therefore need such highly scalable solutions to accelerate the transition of this industry. We will share our expertise and networks on ocean impact and the maritime industry to help Spinergie achieve its ambition and impact at a global scale.”
Becoming the leading technology partner for the maritime energy transition
“Decarbonizing the maritime industry is an enormous and incredibly complex challenge that requires a collaborative approach through industry partnerships and the most advanced technologies. We are developing the best possible products, connecting previously siloed data, facilitating interoperability between systems and providing recommendations” said Louis Jozon, Spinergie CPO and co-founder.
Maritime Market Intelligence, Spinergie’s first solution, allows vessel managers and charterers to search and select a vessel anywhere in the world according to vessel specs, availability, and past performances.It analyses vessel environmental and operational performances, allowing commercial and operational teams to have more visibility on their competitors and suppliers across the globe.
In 2021, Spinergie launched Smart Fleet Management, a solution suite enabling clients to monitor and optimize maritime operations (offshore wind, dredging, bulk shipping among others). It provides realtime visibility, performance analysis and recommendations such as fuel consumption and emissions by activity mode, operational metrics (pax transferred, discharge rate, speed analysis…), time analysis(delays, time not to count…). The solution allows teams to anticipate and better manage their operations while automating regulatory reporting.
To facilitate the implementation, save time onboard and drive value very early on, Spinergie has put user experience at the center of its development process. The platform is directly integrated with existing systems as well as sensor data. Tapping into the most granular data enables Spinergie’s models to provide the best environmental and operational insights.
ABOUT SPINERGIE
Spinergie is a maritime technology company specialising in emission reduction, vessel performance and operation optimization. The company’s solution offers the most accurate real-time operations tracking and benchmarking in the market. Powered by millions of data points, Spinergie leverages proprietary algorithms and industry knowledge to generate operation and vessel specific recommendations.Spinergie’s platform is easy to use, highly connected to existing systems and embedded sensors making the industry more transparent, sustainable and efficient.To learn more about Spinergie or request a demo, visit www.spinergie.com.
ABOUT IRIS CAPITAL
Iris Capital is a European venture capital funds’ manager specialized in the digital economy. It fuels entrepreneurs at various stages of maturity, from early stage to growth equity. With its deep sector specialization and extensive experience acquired over 30+ years Iris Capital provides active support to its portfolio companies, through its presence in Paris, Berlin and Munich. Its investments include, among others, Adjust, Braincube, Exotec, Forto, Jedox, Kyriba, LeanIX, Lumapps, Monk, Open-Xchange, Netatmo, Shift Technology, SurePay, Talend, Virtuo, Workpath andYubo. For more information, visit www.iriscapital.com.
ABOUT SWEN CAPITAL PARTNERS AND BLUE OCEAN
SWEN Capital Partners is a leading player in responsible investment in unlisted assets in Europe, with €6.9 billion under management (cumulative commitments). Blue Ocean is SWEN's venture capital fund investing in innovations that help regenerate ocean health, hence contributing to achieve SDG14. It was launched in scientific partnership with Ifremer, France’s ocean research institute. The team backs startups that deliver both systemic impact and competitive market returns. Priorities include solutions to overfishing, ocean pollution and climate change.
