HELSINKI, FINLAND — Next-generation electric vehicle charging software developer eMabler has finalized a €5.5 million Series A investment round. The equity and debt injection will be utilized to accelerate the platform’s geographical expansion beyond its core Nordic footprint into Central European markets, specifically Germany and the United Kingdom, while financing further technical development of its API-first, grid-aware infrastructure software.
The financing round was led by Greencode Ventures, with direct participation from Swiss Post Ventures, Rethink Ventures, and Helkama Kiinteistöt. The total capital structure also incorporates a €1 million Digitalisation and Innovation Loan from Finnvera—implemented alongside the European Investment Fund under the InvestEU Guarantee Programme—and a €1 million grant and loan instrument from Business Finland’s Young Innovative Company program.
Moving Beyond Standalone Charging Applications
eMabler operates an enterprise software layer that enables retailers, energy utilities, fleet managers, and parking operators to natively embed electric vehicle charging functionalities directly into their existing digital ecosystems, loyalty programs, and mobile applications. This white-label methodology bypasses the fragmented, standalone charging apps that historically characterized early-stage infrastructure deployments.
In mature Nordic markets, this embedded deployment model has secured dominant market shares for major commercial operators. For instance, Finland’s largest retail conglomerate, S Group, runs its ABC Charging network via eMabler’s backend. By linking EV charging sessions to its established consumer loyalty architecture, the retailer has captured an over 50 percent market share in public charging. Similarly, state-owned energy major Neste utilizes the platform to deliver integrated workplace and hub charging for corporate fleets without inserting third-party interfaces between the brand and the driver.
In the parking sector, regional operators AimoPark and TimePark leverage the API infrastructure to combine parking and charging actions into unified customer payment windows. eMabler also interfaces directly with EasyPark, enabling external parking operators across European territories to route bundled services through the widespread parking application.
“The Nordic market has reached a level of maturity where standalone, vertical-specific charging propositions no longer make sense,” stated Juha Stenberg, CEO and Co-founder of eMabler. “End-users want charging built into the apps and services they already use. We’ve proven that when you make charging a native part of a brand’s core offering, you win the market. This round allows us to meet the surging demand for this integrated model to a much broader European market.“
Transforming EV Loads into Flexible Energy Assets
As localized grid networks encounter increased price volatility from variable renewable inputs and shifting supply conditions, eMabler’s product roadmap focuses on transforming charging networks into interactive grid resources.
Rather than functioning as passive pipelines for power sales, the software layer enables charge point operators to intelligently adjust charging schedules based on real-time distribution constraints and day-ahead spot pricing. This programmatic load shifting allows operators to optimize utility margins, stabilize regional sub-stations, and offer flexible demand response services back to the wider power transmission network.
“The European EV charging market is accelerating, and the next decade will be won by the software layer underneath it,” noted Ines Bergmann-Nolting, Managing Partner at Greencode Ventures. “eMabler saw that early, made the architectural bet on openness, and has the Nordic customer base to prove it works. We believe their model is highly scalable across Europe, and we’re backing an exceptional team.“
Exclusive Q&A: Juha Stenberg on API Integration, Grid Resiliency, and Open Standards
Following the funding announcement, EV Charging Magazine sat down with Juha Stenberg, CEO and Co-founder of eMabler, to discuss market expansion, driver psychology, and overcoming fragmentation across the UK and Germany.
On B2B Integration vs. Standalone Apps
EV Charging Magazine: Many European markets are heavily saturated with dedicated, standalone charging apps. Are you seeing resistance from legacy brands when convincing them to move charging natively into their existing consumer applications?
Juha Stenberg: There’s resistance, but it’s fading and the reason is that the standalone app model never really served the brands that own the driver relationship. A retailer, a fuel network, parking operator or a utility has spent decades building trust with customers. Asking those customers to download a separate charging app, create another account, and manage another payment method breaks that relationship at exactly the moment the brand should be deepening it. Our customers, many had a separate charging app to start with but then integrated with the core app because charging belongs inside the experience their customers already use.
What we see in Germany and the UK is that the standalone apps aren’t disappearing, but their role is shrinking to where it makes sense: roaming and ad-hoc charging for people away from their usual networks. The brands with real customer bases are moving the other way. The fragmentation in those markets actually accelerates this. When no single charging app has dominant coverage, owning the experience under your own brand becomes more valuable, not less. So I’d say the industry isn’t moving universally toward native integration yet, but the operators with the most to gain are and the rest tend to follow once they see the retention numbers.
On Managing Grid-Aware Charging Flexibility
EV Charging Magazine: When drivers pull up to a charger, their primary instinct is to charge immediately. How does your software implement grid-aware load balancing without creating user friction or disrupting driver expectations?
Juha Stenberg: You’re right that “charge now” is the instinct, and any model that fights it loses. The answer isn’t to lecture drivers about the grid; it’s to make flexibility the easier and cheaper choice by default, while never taking away control. The driver sets a deadline “full by 7am” and the system optimizes within that window. The car still charges; it just charges when power is cleaner and cheaper. Most people never think about it after the first week, the same way nobody thinks about when their dishwasher’s eco mode actually runs.
The incentive has to be concrete and visible. For drivers that usually means money: lower per-kWh cost, free kWh or similar for charging during off-peak or high-renewable periods, shown clearly so the saving is obvious. That’s the part people underestimate: drivers accept optimization readily once they trust that “I need it now” still works instantly when they mean it. Trust in the override is what makes the default stick.
Navigating Regulatory Barriers in the UK and Germany
EV Charging Magazine: Moving into new territories like Germany and the United Kingdom introduces unique local challenges. What are the main regulatory and structural hurdles eMabler faces during this expansion?
Juha Stenberg: The hurdles split into regulatory and structural, and neither is really about the core platform. On the regulatory side, Germany’s calibration-law requirements (Eichrecht) for billing-grade metering, the UK has its own regime around public charging — pricing transparency, payment access, and reliability obligations under the public charge point regulations. Each market also has its own grid-connection and metering rules that affect how smart and grid-aware charging can be deployed. None of these are too difficult, but they demand local understanding.
The structural challenge is fragmentation itself. The Nordics are now relatively consolidated, and continuing to be even more, with a handful of large players and high interoperability. Germany and the UK have many more operators, more hardware variety in the field, and messier roaming relationships. That’s actually where a hardware-agnostic, integration-first platform is more suited.
Remaining Future-Proof and Hardware-Agnostic
EV Charging Magazine: As physical charging hardware evolves rapidly—with ultra-fast DC equipment and technical milestones like Plug & Charge via ISO 15118 becoming mainstream—how does your software remain completely hardware-agnostic over long lifecycles?
Juha Stenberg: The principle that keeps us ahead is that we built on open standards rather than around specific hardware nor vertically closed. Our platform speaks OCPP to the chargers, OCPI to the roaming and e-mobility ecosystem and APIs to other systems, When charging speeds increase — ultra-fast DC today, megawatt charging for trucks tomorrow — the higher power is a hardware and grid-side concern. What our software cares about is the session, the authorization, the billing, and the smart-charging logic, and those don’t fundamentally change because the cable carries more current. We support the newer OCPP versions that the latest hardware uses, so as operators deploy faster chargers, the platform already understands them.
Plug & Charge is more interesting shift and we see it as an advantage rather than a threat, because it is exactly the kind of seamless, branded experience we already build toward. Plug & Charge moves authorization into the vehicle-to-charger handshake, which removes the app-tap-and-wait friction and a driver authenticating automatically against their brand’s account is our vision taken one step further. The way we stay ahead is by not betting the architecture on any single hardware generation: we abstract the charger behind open protocols, keep pace with the OCPP and ISO 15118 versions as they ship, and let the differentiation live in the software layer that the hardware can’t easily replicate. Hardware will keep getting faster and smarter. Our job is to make sure that whatever an operator installs, it works on day one and the customer never has to think about it.
