FundraiseSep 10, 2026, 22:28 UTC

Furo lands $4M seed to bring US-backed battery software to Europe

What's the deal? Furo, a startup building software for industrial battery storage systems, has raised $4 million in seed funding from mostly US backers. The round was led by TQ Ventures, with participation from Neo, Sheryl Sandberg's fund Sandberg Bernthal Venture Partners, and Munich's Center for Digital Technology and Management (CDTM).

Why now? Furo's three 28-year-old founders — Lena Sophia Voß, Leonie Wagner, and Simon Wittner — left Silicon Valley to build in their home country of Germany. They previously ran the company from the US, under the name Lumera Energy, while in Neo's accelerator program.

What's the endgame? The startup helps industrial companies cut electricity costs — a problem it deemed more pressing in Europe than the US. Just a year after founding, Furo has signed enterprise clients including German rail company Deutsche Bahn.

Voß said Germany was hit especially hard, having gone "from one energy crisis to another" over the past five years.

Why Europe? The founders held full-time offers and visa options from Apple, Google X, and AI startups, but chose to return home. "It was a decision to go back to Europe not because we needed to, but because we see that right now, it's a better time to build an energy startup in Europe instead of the US," Voß said.

Proximity to customers and network helped, she added: "A lot of people in our network recommended us to our first customers." Cheaper, accessible engineering talent near Munich's technical universities sweetened the case.

The signal: Furo's $4 million round sits in the top 10% of all-time seed rounds in the energy sector, based on a sample of 9,041 deals. Its trajectory echoes an observation from VC firm a16z: "There is now an advantage to having one foot in your home country, and one foot in Silicon Valley."