PowerLabs raises pre-seed funding to deploy AI energy platform across Nigeria

PowerLabs, a Nigerian energy and climate-tech startup, has raised a pre-seed round led by Breega, with participation from Catalyst Fund, Mercy Corps Ventures, and Kaleo Ventures, to scale its AI-enabled energy orchestration platform, Pai Enterprise.

The company said the funding will accelerate deployment of the platform across commercial and industrial users in Nigeria and support expansion into West Africa.

The raise comes as businesses increase spending on self-generation due to grid constraints. Nigeria’s manufacturing sector spent N1.11 trillion on alternative energy in 2024, a 42 percent increase from the previous year, reflecting reliance on diesel generators, solar systems, inverters, and battery storage.

PowerLabs said Pai Enterprise is designed to move beyond monitoring by coordinating multiple energy sources in real time. The platform models supply, demand, and operational constraints, enabling businesses to operate distributed energy systems as a single network.

The system is used to detect supply fluctuations, manage transitions between power sources, and optimise energy use across facilities.

In hospitals, the platform monitors critical circuits and flags voltage drops or switches to backup systems to support continuity of care. Data centre operators use it to track generator and solar performance to manage efficiency and uptime. Manufacturers apply energy analytics to identify consumption patterns across production lines and manage costs. Retail operators use consumption data to align capacity with demand across locations. Telecom towers, banks, and schools use the system to identify faults and plan maintenance.

PowerLabs said it will use the funding to expand rollout of Pai Enterprise, improve its predictive load management models, and deepen integration with distributed energy assets, including solar systems, storage, and grid infrastructure.

Tobe, chief executive and co-founder of PowerLabs, said the company is focused on coordinating fragmented energy systems into a unified network.

“Distributed energy resources are often seen as fragmented and chaotic, a clutter of devices that don’t speak the same language. At PowerLabs, we believe decentralization doesn’t have to mean disorder. We’re building the intelligence layer that will prove that distributed energy resources can operate as a unified source while leveraging its disaggregation to offer flexibility, cost efficiency, carbon neutrality and redundancy,” he said.

Tosin Faniro-Dada, partner at Breega, said the investment reflects the role of coordinated systems in addressing energy reliability challenges.

“We backed PowerLabs at the pre-seed stage because we believe intelligent orchestration will be essential to solving Africa’s energy reliability challenge. The team is building the software and hardware layer that enables businesses to coordinate multiple distributed energy sources in real time,” she said.

Olúwátóyìn Emmanuel-Olúbákè, chief investment officer at Catalyst Fund, said businesses are operating in environments where energy decisions require balancing cost, supply reliability, and emissions.

“PowerLabs is starting in Africa to build the intelligence to orchestrate these systems seamlessly without sacrificing any of these critical factors,” he said.

The investors said the funding supports the development of systems that manage energy supply in real time and support operations across sectors.