Rocsys, the Dutch autonomous vehicle charging system startup that established a U.S. headquarters in Portland early last year, announced a $36 million Series A capital raise.
The funding will fuel R&D, product advancements and further investment in the United States, it said.
“We’ve been growing to better meet the U.S. market needs,” Erin Galiger, senior business development manager out of the Portland office, said, noting that the Rose City is the company’s only U.S. outpost.
In the past year, Rocsys doubled its Portland space and the employee count went from three to seven, she said. New positions came in engineering, program management and sales and marketing.
New incentives that reward domestic content have Rocsys exploring development of a supply chain and manufacturing capabilities in the U.S., Galiger added, although it was too soon to say what that could mean for the company’s Portland presence.
The Rocsys system, which can attach to any electric vehicle charger, uses soft robotics, computer vision and artificial intelligence to give it the ability to plug into vehicles under varying conditions. The company says automated charging improves the reliability, speed and safety of charging.
Commercial fleets are a key early target, particularly ports. Autonomous public charging of electric vehicles could become a market by 2026 or 2027, Galiger said.
The funding round was led by SEB Greentech Venture Capital and included participation from Graduate Entrepreneur, the European Investment Bank and Forward One, a returning investor. It was split roughly equally between debt and equity financing, Rocsys said.
