Montreal-based AutoTech company Effenco has announced the close of a $12 million Series A round of funding. The round was led by a $6 million investment from BDC, as part of the federal government’s ongoing support for Canadian cleantech. Investissement Quebec also participated in the round.
Effenco’s Active Stop-Start System is compatible with the 500,000 vocational heavy trucks sold every year in North America and Europe, and the company says the new financing will partly be used to claim a share of this market. Effenco will also look to capitalize on local AI expertise of the industry to commercialize a SaaS program that can detect and interpret behavioral, mechanical, and logistics problems.
“Effenco’s exciting technology has a proven and compelling value proposition, payback and performance, and the company is well positioned to scale up its manufacturing business model,” says Susan Rohac, the vice-president of Cleantech Practice at BDC.
As part of Budget 2017, the Canadian government committed $130 million over five years for cleantech research and development. That commitment to cleantech was increased in the recent fall economic update, earmarking $50 million on a cash basis towards increasing venture capital available to cleantech companies under the Venture Capital Catalyst Initiative.
“When we help clean technologies scale up, we support our whole economy. Innovations in clean technology are creating good jobs and helping to meet our climate change goals to benefit all Canadians,” said ISED minister Navdeep Bains.
