The German e-mobility tech startup, Pionix, has raised over €8 million to scale its open-source-powered products for the global e-mobility industry. Built on the EVerest stack, Pionix offers a suite of engineering and enterprise services to unify EV charging technology under a common framework. The late seed round was led by Ascend Capital Partners, with participation from Start-up BW Seed Fonds, managed by MBG Baden-Württemberg, Pale blue dot, Vireo Ventures, Axeleo Ventures and further investors.
Despite rapid development across e-mobility in recent years, EV charging remains fragmented. The industry’s growing ecosystem of hardware and software companies operates proprietary, closed software systems that often fail to communicate seamlessly with one another. Failures in interoperability and communication have led to reliability issues, inefficient maintenance of infrastructure and charging session error rates of up to 25%.
Founded in 2021, Pionix’s products offer a shared software foundation for all EV charging technologies, ensuring reliability, interoperability and future-readiness of global infrastructure. In response to the industry’s challenges, Pionix initiated and contributed significantly to EVerest, an open-source software platform. EVerest serves as a common foundation for charger manufacturers, charging operators, automakers and fleets to build on, eliminating compatibility issues and enabling faster innovation across the EV charging ecosystem.
Today, EVerest has grown into one of the most impactful open-source initiatives in cleantech and with support from 600 contributors from more than 70 organizations and powers hundreds of thousands of chargers globally.
The open-source software, donated by Pionix in 2021 to Linux Foundation Energy (LF Energy), has an estimated ecosystem value of more than $500 million – already almost half of the estimated ecosystem value of the Linux kernel, which is considered the world’s most renowned open-source project at roughly $1.2 billion.
Pionix’s founder and CEO Marco Möller said: “Reliability isn’t just a nice-to-have for EV charging – it’s fundamental to the e-mobility transition. The fragmented landscape of incompatible systems and high error rates has slowed the transition for too long, but open source offers a sustainable solution. With EVerest at the core and our Pionix Cloud services and ChargeBridge hardware on top, we make it radically simpler to build, integrate and operate chargers that just work – every time. That’s what the industry needs to deliver a transition that sticks.”
Jerry Hong, CEO of Ascend Capital Partners, the lead investor in Pionix’ late seed round, said: “We believe Pionix is laying the software rails for the future of EV charging. Their role as initiator and steward of EVerest gives them credibility and leverage to scale globally, and we are excited to support their international growth, particularly as demand rises across Europe and Asia.”
Joel Larsson, General Partner at Pale blue dot, added: “As Android standardized the smartphone ecosystem, Pionix is defining the open platform layer that will unify and scale global EV charging infrastructure.”
Pionix will use the €8 million investment to fix the fragmented industry by delivering its open, modular enterprise products for both software and hardware. Pionix Cloud is the specialized manufacturer backend software designed for EV chargers running on EVerest, while ChargeBridge is a pre-certified, plug-and-play hardware module that simplifies the integration of charging systems. Together, these products help manufacturers and operators deploy reliable chargers faster, while ensuring end-to-end interoperability.
The company will also accelerate the growth of the EVerest open-source ecosystem, joining forces with its global community to unlock new levels of collaboration and lay the groundwork for upcoming initiatives that will further shape the future of EV charging.
Andreas Stadie, Investment Manager at MBG Baden-Württemberg, said: “Baden-Württemberg has long been a hub for automotive innovation, and Pionix shows how that spirit now drives the future of EV charging. We’re delighted to back their journey.”
Felix Krause, Managing Partner at Vireo Ventures, said: “Pionix is an impact-driven company through and through. They were recently named to the Norrsken Impact/100 – a list celebrating fast-growing companies where positive impact is a core, non-negotiable part of the business model. That perfectly captures Pionix. We’re proud to continue supporting their journey.”
