The German startup Sunfire is dealing with this
Sunfire is a startup and electrolysis company from Germany. The company now employs 500 people at various locations in Germany and Switzerland. According to Sunfire’s own statements on the company website, it is its goal to “replace fossil raw materials in all areas of life with renewable energies – and thus create a sustainable future for future generations.” With this vision, the company develops and produces highly efficient, industrial electrolysers that produce green hydrogen and synthesis gas. In the meantime, the startup can already count well-known companies among its strategic partners or investors. These include, for example, the steel plant manufacturer SMS Group and the Finnish fuel company Neste. With their help, it should be possible to carry out a sustainable transformation of energy-intensive sectors such as the chemical, fuel and steel industries.
company history
Sunfire was founded in 2010 by Nils Aldag, Christian von Olshausen and Carl Berninghausen with the vision of making renewable energies available everywhere through innovative electrolysis solutions. In 2011, a company for solid oxide fuel cells (SOFC) was acquired as a starting point for subsequent electrolyser developments. Over the years, the company eventually worked on developing an electrolyser and expanding the fuel cell portfolio. Ten years after its founding, further important milestones in Sunfire’s company history followed. In 2020, the company joined forces with Climeworks, SMS Group and Valinor to build the world’s first commercial Power-to-Liquids (PtL) plant. The takeover of the alkaline electrolysis company IHT followed, which has more than 70 years of experience in the manufacture and operation of alkaline electrolysers. Just one year later, Sunfire took over the Solingen location of the experienced electroplating specialist.
The next German unicorn?
In 2021, investors provided significant growth capital to Sunfire in a Series D financing. The startup received a total of 109 million euros from the consortium, whose lead investors included Lightrock and Planet First Partners. Other investors in this round included Carbon Direct Capital Management and HydrogenOne Capital. Only one year later, the next round of financing followed with Series D 2, with which Sunfire won the two new investors Copenhagen Infrastructure Partners (CIP) and Blue Earth Capital and brought the company 86 million euros.
As the Handelsblatt also reports, Sunfire is about to be valued in the billions. According to financial sources, Sunfire is said to be in negotiations with investors about a financing round that could value the company at more than one billion euros. This would give Sunfire the status of a “unicorn”. This is what founding companies are called from this valuation threshold. Specifically, the company is talking to financiers for a sum of around 200 million euros, as people familiar with the matter told the newspaper. “With regard to our further financing, we currently have nothing to announce. Of course, as a fast-growing company, we are constantly in contact with investors,” a company spokeswoman explained to the Handelsblatt.
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