ERV Fund II Hits $13.5M First Close, Anchored by Centrica

TL;DR

Energy Revolution Ventures (ERV), the London-based seed and Series A investor in electrification hardware, has announced the first close of its second fund, ERV Fund II, anchored by a $13.5 million commitment from Centrica, one of the UK's largest integrated energy suppliers. The fund targets $50 million and will back startups in energy storage, grid technology and advanced materials, continuing the strategy ERV ran on its $18 million Fund I, which closed in December 2024 and backed nine companies including Green Li-ion, Anthro Energy, Sention Technologies, Immaterial and Blixt. It matters because a corporate anchor of this size from a major utility, rather than a financial LP, gives ERV's portfolio something most seed-stage hard tech funds can't offer on day one: a direct commercial validation and deployment path into a utility serving millions of customers.

Key Takeaways

Centrica's $13.5 million anchor is a strategic commitment, not a passive LP check. Centrica CEO Chris O'Shea framed the investment explicitly around sourcing "new technologies that can be deployed at scale" to meet grid pressure from electrification, heating, transport, industry and data-centre growth. For ERV's portfolio companies, that means a potential first commercial customer and technical validation partner sitting inside the LP base itself, not just a wire transfer.

The fund is roughly 2.8x Fund I's size, but the first close is proportionally smaller. ERV Fund I closed at $18 million in December 2024; Fund II targets $50 million, a clear step-up reflecting demand for hard tech and electrification capital since. The $13.5 million first close is about 27% of that target, anchored by a single strategic LP, which is a normal and often preferable structure for hard tech funds that want a credible cornerstone investor locked in before opening the round to additional capital.

ERV pairs a generalist investment team with a genuine technical bench through Prosemino. The fund's technical committee draws on Paul Shearing (Royal Academy of Engineering Chair in Emerging Battery Technologies, UCL), Chris Howard (Professor of Materials Physics, UCL) and Daniel Brett (Bramble Energy founder, 20 years in electrochemical power systems), alongside Gyen Ming Angel, Managing Director of Prosemino, ERV's affiliated venture-building lab. That's a materially deeper technical diligence bench than most seed funds can field for battery, grid and advanced-materials deals.

The sector focus is narrower and more capital-intensive than typical climate tech generalist funds. Energy storage, grid technology and advanced materials, with selective renewable fuels and carbon capture exposure, is a deliberately hardware-heavy thesis. That's a bet that the cost curves for batteries, motors and power electronics — which GP Marcus Clover has pointed to as having "fallen to a fraction of their cost 20 years ago" — are now favorable enough to underwrite venture-scale returns in physical infrastructure, not just software wrapped around it.

Fund Overview

Fund Name: ERV Fund II
Fund Size: $50 million target; $13.5 million first close
Stage: Seed and Series A
Check Size: Not publicly disclosed
Geography: Global, with prior investments across North America, Europe and Singapore; firm headquartered in London
Focus: Energy storage, grid technology and advanced materials, with selective investment in renewable fuels and carbon capture
Key LPs: Centrica plc (anchor investor, $13.5 million commitment)

Why This Fund Matters

The core problem for hard tech and electrification-focused venture funds has never been thesis quality, it's been the mismatch between the capital intensity of the technology and the risk tolerance of typical seed-stage LPs. Battery chemistry, grid hardware and advanced materials require longer development cycles and more capital before revenue than a SaaS company, which is exactly why so much venture capital has defaulted to software even as electrification spending accelerates. ERV's answer to that mismatch, on both Fund I and Fund II, has been to build a technical diligence capability — via Prosemino's lab-backed venture studio and a technical committee of working academics and operators — that a generalist fund simply doesn't have, and to pair it with a strategic corporate anchor that can validate technology commercially rather than just financially.

Centrica's involvement matters beyond the check size. As one of the UK's largest integrated energy suppliers, Centrica sits at the exact point in the value chain — grid operations, customer electrification, demand management — where ERV's portfolio companies need their first real-world deployment. A utility LP investing directly into a fund, rather than running its own isolated corporate venture arm, is a structure that gives portfolio founders access to that utility's technical and commercial teams without ERV's fund economics being subordinated to a single corporate's strategic agenda the way an in-house CVC fund often is.

The step-up from an $18 million Fund I to a $50 million Fund II target also reflects where capital is actually flowing in climate and energy tech right now: away from the diffuse "climate tech" generalist category that boomed and then cooled after 2021-2022, and toward the narrower, more technically defensible categories — grid infrastructure, energy storage chemistry, advanced materials — where the AI-driven surge in electricity demand has made the commercial case newly urgent rather than purely regulatory or ESG-driven.

Fund I's portfolio gives a reasonable preview of what Fund II's book will look like: Green Li-ion (battery recycling and refining), Anthro Energy, Sention Technologies, Immaterial (metal-organic framework materials) and Blixt are all hardware-adjacent, IP-defensible businesses rather than software layered on top of existing energy infrastructure. That consistency across two fund cycles suggests ERV isn't chasing the current AI-and-electrification narrative opportunistically; it's a continuation of a thesis the firm has run since at least 2020-2021.

The Team

ERV's General Partners are Marcus Clover, a chartered engineer and energy technologist with a background as fuel cell systems lead at Arrival and prior experience at Stratospheric Platforms; Hayden Sommer, who brings 20 years of transactional, commercial and legal advisory experience across energy, mining and engineering, with a specialism in multi-jurisdictional capital raising; and Peter Robson, a 35-plus-year investor who serves as Chief Executive of Tree Top Asset Management and a director of Bury Street Capital, and who led Fund I as Managing Director. Dr. Harry Michael, a UCL-trained chemical engineer with more than seven years in energy storage systems, is Principal and leads deal sourcing and technical due diligence. James Beams serves as CFO, bringing more than 30 years of board-level experience across mining, energy and financial services, with Carolyn Kim as Group Financial Controller.

Fund II's technical committee draws on ERV's affiliated venture studio, Prosemino, whose founders and directors include Professor Dan Brett (electrochemical power systems, founder of Bramble Energy), Professor Paul Shearing (Royal Academy of Engineering Chair in Emerging Battery Technologies, UCL) and Professor Chris Howard (Materials Physics, UCL). Dr. Gyen Ming Angel, Prosemino's Managing Director and a nanomaterials and electrochemistry specialist, is joining Fund II's technical committee directly. Venture partners Jeremy Ip (Managing Director and Head of Sustainable Investing at Mount Logan Capital, formerly Goldman Sachs and JPMorgan) and Dr. Mark Selby (Chief Growth Officer at Ceres Power, Royal Academy of Engineering Fellow) round out the fund's advisory bench.

Early Portfolio

ERV's $18 million Fund I, fully deployed across nine companies since closing in December 2024, includes Green Li-ion (lithium-ion battery recycling and refining), Anthro Energy, Sention Technologies, Immaterial (metal-organic framework advanced materials) and Blixt, spanning North America, Europe and Singapore. Fund II is expected to continue that hardware-and-materials-heavy pattern within its energy storage, grid technology and advanced materials mandate.

What This Means for Founders

ERV is a strong fit for seed and Series A hard tech founders building in energy storage chemistry, grid infrastructure and advanced materials who need investors capable of real technical diligence rather than a generalist pattern-match. The firm's structure, with Prosemino's lab space and academic technical committee sitting alongside the fund, is particularly relevant for founders still de-risking core technology rather than purely scaling go-to-market — the kind of company a software-focused seed fund would typically pass on.

The Centrica relationship is the more distinctive value-add: portfolio founders working on grid technology, demand management or storage systems get a credible path to a pilot or commercial conversation with one of the UK's largest energy suppliers, which is a meaningfully different kind of introduction than a typical LP-founder demo day connection.

Fund Momentum Take

The Centrica anchor is the story here more than the headline fund size. A $50 million target is a modest fund by AI-infrastructure standards, but it's appropriately scaled for seed and Series A checks in energy storage and grid hardware, and a strategic utility writing a $13.5 million first-close check signals real conviction rather than a token corporate-innovation gesture. The bigger question is whether that single-LP-anchored first close converts into a broader, diversified LP base by final close, or whether ERV ends up more dependent on Centrica's continued strategic appetite than a fund with a wider institutional base would be.

The risk worth naming plainly: a fund this closely tied to one strategic energy LP has to manage the perception, fair or not, that deal flow or follow-on decisions could tilt toward what serves Centrica's own grid and electrification roadmap rather than pure return-maximizing venture logic. ERV's technical committee and academic bench are a real differentiator and should keep the fund's diligence independent, but it's a dynamic worth founders asking about directly in diligence conversations.

Our bet: the step-up from Fund I to Fund II, plus a utility-grade strategic anchor, positions ERV as one of the more credible hard tech-focused funds in the UK energy transition space heading into a period where AI-driven electricity demand is making grid and storage technology commercially urgent rather than a regulatory afterthought. Worth watching whether Fund II closes at or above its $50 million target, and how quickly the remaining ~$36.5 million comes in beyond the Centrica anchor.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is ERV Fund II's target size and how much has it raised so far?
ERV Fund II targets $50 million and has announced a first close of $13.5 million, anchored entirely by Centrica.

Who is Centrica and why did it anchor the fund?
Centrica is one of the UK's largest integrated energy suppliers. CEO Chris O'Shea said the investment is aimed at sourcing new technologies that can be deployed at scale to address grid pressure from electrification, heating, transport, industry and data-centre growth.

What stage and sectors does ERV Fund II invest in?
Seed and Series A companies in energy storage, grid technology and advanced materials, with selective investment in renewable fuels and carbon capture.

Who are ERV's General Partners?
Marcus Clover, Hayden Sommer and Peter Robson lead the fund, supported by Principal Dr. Harry Michael and a technical committee drawn from ERV's affiliated venture studio, Prosemino.

What did ERV's first fund invest in?
Fund I closed at $18 million in December 2024 and fully deployed across nine companies, including Green Li-ion, Anthro Energy, Sention Technologies, Immaterial and Blixt, across North America, Europe and Singapore.

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