A Lagos-based energy and climate-tech start-up, PowerLabs, has raised a pre-seed funding round to tackle Nigeria’s fragmented and unreliable power systems.

The round was led by Breega, with participation from Catalyst Fund, Mercy Corps Ventures and Kaleo Ventures.

The company said in a statement by CEO & Co-Founder, Tobechukwu Arinze on Saturday that proceeds would be used to scale its artificial intelligence-enabled platform, Pai Enterprise, across commercial and industrial sectors in Nigeria and to support expansion into other West African markets.

The investment comes as companies across Nigeria grapple with persistent grid instability, forcing them to rely on a patchwork of diesel generators, rooftop solar systems, inverters and battery storage to maintain continuity. Managing these disparate systems has become both costly and operationally complex.

Nigeria’s manufacturing sector alone spent N1.11tn on alternative energy sources in 2024, a 42 per cent increase from the previous year, highlighting the growing burden of self-generation on businesses.

For years, energy management has largely focused on monitoring consumption. But in an environment where outages are frequent and supply unpredictable, visibility without control has offered limited value. Facility managers are often left making reactive decisions, from adjusting production schedules based on fuel availability to coordinating multiple backup systems to keep critical services running.

The Chief Executive Officer and Co-Founder of PowerLabs, Tobechukwu Arinze, said the company was building an intelligence layer for distributed energy resources.

“Distributed energy resources are often seen as fragmented and chaotic, a clutter of devices that don’t speak the same language. At PowerLabs, we believe decentralisation doesn’t have to mean disorder.

“We’re building the intelligence layer that will prove that distributed energy resources can operate as a unified source while leveraging its disaggregation to offer flexibility, cost efficiency, carbon neutrality and redundancy … more than a centralised energy system ever could,” he said.

Licensed Operations in Nigeria

Rather than simply tracking energy usage, Pai Enterprise is designed to sense, communicate and act across multiple energy sources in real time, continuously modelling supply, demand and operational constraints.

The company said organisations would be able to operate their own intelligent microgrids, transforming energy from a reactive problem into a strategic resource.

PowerLabs said the benefits of its platform were most visible in sectors where downtime carries significant risk. In hospitals, real-time monitoring of critical circuits can help ensure uninterrupted power for intensive care units and operating theatres. Data centres can optimise the performance of generators and solar assets without compromising uptime, while manufacturers can analyse energy use across production lines to reduce costs and improve efficiency.

The company plans to use the new funding to accelerate deployment of its platform, enhance its predictive load-management algorithms and deepen integration across a range of energy assets, from solar and battery storage to conventional grid supply.

A partner at Breega, Tosin Faniro-Dada, said the firm backed PowerLabs because intelligent orchestration would be essential to solving Africa’s energy reliability challenge.

“The team is building the software and hardware layer that enables businesses to coordinate multiple distributed energy sources in real time. We’re excited to support them as they prove the impact of this model across critical sectors over the next 12–18 months,” she said.

The Chief Investment Officer at Catalyst Fund, Oluwotoyin Emmanuel-Olubake, said businesses increasingly operated in complex energy environments that required balancing cost, reliability and carbon impact.

“Platforms that can manage these trade-offs in real time are becoming essential,” she said.

(The PUNCH)