Xeal Raises $40 Million In Series B To Expand Its Charging Empire

David Shultz

David Shultz reports on clean technology and electric vehicles, among other industries, for dot.LA. His writing has appeared in The Atlantic, Outside, Nautilus and many other publications.

Xeal Energy logo and car in parking lot
courtesy of Xeal Energy

Xeal Energy, a high tech charging infrastructure company focused on apartment buildings and commercial real estate properties, secured $40 million dollars in Series B funding this week. Keyframe Capital led the round and ArcTern Ventures, Moderne Ventures, Ramez Naam, Nexus Labs, Wind Ventures and Alpaca VC also contributed.

For the last few years, Xeal has prided itself on going after customers that have typically been overlooked in the charging market. When dot.LA spoke with cofounder and CEO Alexander Isaacson, he’d just gotten back from a trip from Chicago where he’d been attending a senior living conference to see if there was a fit for chargers in retirement homes or assisted living communities. “It's cool to see other asset types—not just apartments and workplaces, but new types of buildings—starting to think about charging stations,” said Isaacson.


The new money will go towards helping the company expand its charging network. In addition to providing the charger hardware itself, Xeal also provides software and analytics to help charger owners and users maximize their money. In the last year the company has grown its network of real estate partners from 12 to nearly 100 and expects to hit 10,000 chargers by the end of the year. This business model allows Xeal to make money by charging property owners for installation, plus a subscription model fee for access to the analytics. Property owners then make their investment back through the revenue generated via the charger, some of which is, again, shared with Xeal.

Xeal’s rapid expansion in the last twelve months has also allowed the company to see up close, many of the common problems facing EV charging. Charger uptime and maintenance remains a daunting problem for the entire EV industry, but Xeal thinks it has a solution that will help its clients get closer to 100% charger uptime. The answer comes in the form of a software solution called “Apollo,” which seeks to upend the traditional IT infrastructure underlying most charger networks and replace it with a decentralized system that borrows on the same principles underlying blockchain currencies.

Xeal chargers courtesy of Xeal Energy courtesy of Xeal Energy

Most charging stations are centralized, meaning that each charger connects to the internet before connecting to a central server at a distant location. Any operation requires that the link between charger and serve be active. That can mean that to charge your car in Los Angeles, the charger has to communicate with an Amazon Web Services cloud server all the way in Texas. Similar to Christmas lights, if there’s any issue with that chain, charging won’t work, and Isaacson said, “the whole system breaks.” Xeal’s Apollo software trades the centralized model for a “distributed ledger” that treats every single smartphone as a data center. Anytime anyone’s phone accesses a Xeal charger, it creates a new snapshot of the entire network. Information on every charger’s status, price, and operability is updated with each transaction. If a Xeal charger loses connectivity and therefore can’t process payment for some reason, its neighbors are alerted to the issue and as a result send that data to a nearby smartphone. This updates the digital ledger and alerts Xeal to the nature of the problem.

“I’m not sure if you've ever taken a trip across the country to some of the public charging stations, but a big issue is that if they don't work, you have to call a person,” said Isaacson. “They'll just tell you to move to the next [charging station]. They really have no idea of what the issue is.”

Though the startup was born out of the Los Angeles Cleantech Incubator (LACI) and maintains its engineering lab in Venice, Xeal has recently moved its headquarters to New York City. While still small—they just hired their 30th employee this week—the new series B money gives the company flexibility and plenty of room for growth. In the Venice lab, engineers are working on ways to apply (and eventually sell) Xeal’s Apollo protocol to other chargers, which would add yet another revenue stream for the company. Isaacson said he’s in discussion with “a few major players” but declined to name names. In the meantime, the company plans to continue expanding its charging network to an even more diverse set of real estate classes and types of electric vehicles.

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AgTech Startup Leaf is Helping Farmers Brace for Unexpected Rainfall After Record Year

Samson Amore

Samson Amore is a reporter for dot.LA. He holds a degree in journalism from Emerson College and previously covered technology and entertainment for TheWrap and reported on the SoCal startup scene for the Los Angeles Business Journal. Send tips or pitches to samsonamore@dot.la and find him on Twitter @Samsonamore.

green leaf drawing and rolling farm lands
Evan Xie

At least 50,000 acres in the state of California are estimated to be underwater after a record-breaking year of rainfall. So far this year, California has received nearly 29 inches of rain, with the bulk being dumped on its central and southern coasts. Farmers are already warning that the price of dairy, tomatoes and other vegetables will rise as the weather prevents them from re-seeding their fields.

While no current technology can prevent weather disasters, Leaf Agriculture, a Los Angeles-based startup that launched in 2018, wants to help farmers better manage their properties by leveraging data.

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https://twitter.com/samsonamore
samsonamore@dot.la

Two LA Startups Participate in Techstars' 2023 Health Care Accelerator

Decerry Donato

Decerry Donato is a reporter at dot.LA. Prior to that, she was an editorial fellow at the company. Decerry received her bachelor's degree in literary journalism from the University of California, Irvine. She continues to write stories to inform the community about issues or events that take place in the L.A. area. On the weekends, she can be found hiking in the Angeles National forest or sifting through racks at your local thrift store.

Two LA Startups Participate in Techstars' 2023 Health Care Accelerator
Courtesy of Techstars

Earlier this month, Techstars announced that their 2023 accelerator program will have two simultaneous cohorts–Techstars health care and L.A. As previously reported on dot.LA, Techstars has brought on board returning partners Cedars Sinai, United Healthcare, along with new partners that include UCI Health and Point32Health for its health care cohort.

“For our healthcare program, this is the first time we've had multiple partners as sponsors,” Managing Director Matt Kozlov said. “This allows us to support and mentor a wider diversity of companies than we've been able to help historically.”

The in-person program is taking place in Los Angeles and two out of the twelve companies accepted into the health care program are based in Southern California.

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The Creator-To-Podcaster Pipeline Is Ready to Explode

Nat Rubio-Licht
Nat Rubio-Licht is a freelance reporter with dot.LA. They previously worked at Protocol writing the Source Code newsletter and at the L.A. Business Journal covering tech and aerospace. They can be reached at nat@dot.la.
The Creator-To-Podcaster Pipeline Is Ready to Explode
Evan Xie

It’s no secret that men dominate the podcasting industry. Even as women continue to grow their foothold, men still make up many of the highest-earning podcasts, raking in massive paychecks from ad revenue and striking deals with streaming platforms worth hundreds of millions of dollars.

But a new demographic is changing that narrative: Gen-Z female influencers and content creators.

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nat@dot.la
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