With USD 1.8 M Seed, OAE Wants To Make Electricity Flow Like Mobile Money In SA

Deal Street

African Startup Funding Tracker

US$741,804,000+

*Data updated daily at 18:00 EAT

With USD 1.8 M In Seed, OAE Wants To Make Electricity Flow Like Mobile Money In SA

As South Africa cautiously steps into the era of energy liberalisation, Cape Town-based startup Open Access Energy (OAE) is positioning itself as the connective tissue between a crumbling monopoly and a more decentralised, digital future.

The company just secured USD 1.8 M in oversubscribed seed funding from climate-focused investors E3 Capital, Equator VC, and Factor[e] Ventures.

It’s a follow-up to last year when the company secured a USD 750 K investment from Factor[e] Ventures, marking the initial tranche of a USD 1.5 M seed round. That round has now hit an oversubscribed close.

Interestingly, OAE is not a solar panel maker or a battery manufacturer but a software company. And in a country where policy shifts are finally allowing private generation and trading to gain momentum, OAE is pursuing a simple approach.

Their play is to build the digital rails that let energy flow efficiently from producers to consumers, bypassing legacy bottlenecks.

OAE’s cloud-based platform, EnergyPro, automates the backend of energy wheeling; the process of routing electricity from decentralised producers, like solar farms, through national or municipal grids to end users.

That means everything from real-time metering to risk forecasting and smart matching of energy demand and supply can now happen without spreadsheets or guesswork.

For independent power producers and municipalities, that’s the difference between energy being bankable or wasted.

It’s also where AI becomes more than just a buzzword. With renewables like solar and wind generating uneven power loads, AI-driven forecasting and automation are crucial to keeping the lights on and costs down.

In South Africa, where Eskom’s dominance has left the national grid strained, blackouts frequent, and municipalities scrambling to manage their own supply, this kind of infrastructure is useful.

“Private generation is central to South Africa’s energy transition,” said Gerjo Hoffman, OAE’s CEO. “This funding allows us to scale the tools that IPPs and energy traders need to actually participate in a liberalised market.”

The investment comes as the country prepares for grid-scale battery projects and increased decentralised power generation, both of which will rely heavily on intelligent coordination software like OAE’s.

With more reform on the horizon and grid congestion still a major constraint, platforms that can translate electrons into real economic value are poised to define the next phase of South Africa’s energy story.

And unlike many cleantech solutions in the region, OAE’s is pure software; light, scalable, and built for markets long overdue for flexibility.