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. The funding will be used to scale its AI-enabled energy orchestration platform, Pai Enterprise, with the aim of helping businesses manage power more efficiently and reduce reliance on unreliable electricity systems.
For many businesses in Nigeria, power supply remains one of the biggest operational challenges. Frequent grid failures, rising diesel costs and fragmented energy systems continue to disrupt productivity and increase expenses. PowerLabs’ new funding is expected to support a solution that directly addresses these challenges by improving how businesses access and manage energy.
Announcing the raise, Tobechukwu Arize, co-founder and CEO of PowerLabs, said the focus is not just on the funding but on what it will enable. “This milestone might make headlines, but what matters most to me isn’t the funding itself; it’s what this capital enables,” he said. He added that businesses should not have to adjust their operations because of unreliable power supply.
Driving Reliable and Cost-Effective Energy for Businesses
The funding will allow PowerLabs to ramp up production of Pai Enterprise, expand its team and accelerate deployments across Nigeria. The platform is already being used in sectors such as agriculture, real estate, healthcare, manufacturing, banking and education, showing that its model works in real business environments.
Nigeria’s power challenges highlight the importance of such solutions. According to the World Bank, power shortages cost the country about US$29 billion annually, while many households receive only around 6.6 hours of electricity per day. As a result, businesses often rely on diesel generators or invest in private solar systems, both of which increase costs. Diesel prices alone rose by more than 68 percent in the year leading to April 2024, according to the Nigerian Bureau of Statistics.
PowerLabs is working to change this reality by coordinating different energy sources into one system. Tobe explained that many businesses currently manage power in a reactive way. “We’ve witnessed multi-site and always-on businesses struggle with energy chaos. Teams manually switch between generators, inverters and solar, making decisions reactively instead of proactively,” he said.
Pai Enterprise addresses this by acting as an intelligence layer that connects different power sources. It helps businesses monitor energy use, predict costs and automatically switch between sources to maintain continuous operations. “Pai Enterprise introduces operational synergy. It is the intelligence layer that unifies visibility and optimizes uptime, cost and performance,” Tobe said.
Investors believe this approach is key to solving energy challenges across Africa. Tosin Faniro-Dada, partner at Breega, said the company’s model stood out early on. “We backed PowerLabs at the pre-seed stage because we believe intelligent orchestration will be essential to solving Africa’s energy reliability challenge,” she said, adding that the platform enables businesses to coordinate multiple energy sources in real time.
Supporting Sustainability and Economic Growth
Beyond improving reliability, PowerLabs’ solution also supports cost savings and environmental sustainability. Many businesses depend heavily on diesel generators, which are expensive and contribute to carbon emissions. By optimizing the mix of grid power, generators and renewable energy, Pai helps reduce both costs and environmental impact.
The platform uses AI and real-time data from connected devices to analyze energy patterns and make decisions. It offers energy analytics, which helps businesses understand usage patterns, sizing optimization to ensure the right investment in power infrastructure and automated dispatch that switches between energy sources to minimize costs.
Tobe said the company is focused on turning fragmented energy systems into a coordinated network. “Distributed energy resources are often seen as fragmented and chaotic. At PowerLabs, we believe decentralization doesn’t have to mean disorder,” he said. He added that the company is building a system that allows different energy sources to work together while improving flexibility, cost efficiency and resilience.
The impact of this approach could be significant. Nigeria’s national grid collapsed multiple times in 2024, leading to widespread blackouts. For businesses, this means lost revenue, reduced productivity and higher operating costs. With a system like Pai Enterprise, companies can maintain operations during outages by automatically switching to alternative power sources.
As deployments expand, the company expects to deliver both economic and environmental benefits. Lower energy costs can improve business competitiveness, while reduced reliance on diesel supports cleaner operations. In sectors such as manufacturing, retail and healthcare, this can also help protect jobs and ensure continuity of services.
