The Fire Awards: Blink Charging Co.

Editor's note: Each year, DC Inno and the Washington Business Journal publishes the "Fire Awards" spotlighting the founders, funders and fast-growing companies helping to power Greater Washington’s innovation economy. Click here to read our other profiles.

Talk about momentum.

In just the last few months, Blink Charging Co., a Bowie-based manufacturer of electric vehicle charging devices and operator of EV charging stations, has struck agreements to add charging stations in public buildings across the U.S.; electrify the vehicle fleet of England’s largest parcel delivery company; and build an EV charging network across New York state. 

Those deals continued a torrid stretch of growth for the 15-year-old publicly traded company, whose revenue more than doubled in 2023 and was up 30% through the first six months of this year. 

Blink (NASDAQ: BLNK) is the third-largest operator of charging stations in the U.S., behind Tesla and ChargePoint, and the second-largest manufacturer of EV plugs. With the expansion of its manufacturing facility in Bowie earlier this year, the company expects to more than quadruple production of EV plugs, to around 50,000, CEO Brendan Jones told the Washington Business Journal earlier this year.

Blink landed in Bowie in 2022, when it acquired the EV charging company SemaConnect Inc. for $200 million. At the time it was headquartered in Miami, but earlier this year it moved its headquarters to Bowie, thanks in part to $1.6 million in loans, grants and tax incentives it received from the state of Maryland.

Blink spent about $49 million building the new 30,000-square-foot facility at the Melford Town Center. It employed about 50 people in Bowie before the new facility opened and expects to have “a minimum” of 100 workers there by early 2025, according to Jones. 

Jones said Blink is consolidating operations from five locations across the country into the new manufacturing plant and a 15,000-square-foot corporate office nearby.

Blink Charging Co.