CIOC Energy raises €3M from CleverNett to expand its energy asset management platform across four markets

CIOC Energy (Belgium) has raised €3 million from CleverNett, a Belgian renewable energy developer that took a strategic minority equity stake in the company. Founded in September 2023, CIOC Energy operates a single-platform solution that lets businesses monitor, control, and trade energy from solar panels and battery installations in real time. The company currently manages 100+ business sites and 100+ MWh of battery capacity across Belgium, the Netherlands, Germany, and Romania.

This round is not a traditional VC-backed equity raise; it is a strategic corporate investment. Stage is unstated and no outside investors are named. That context matters for reading the signal: CleverNett is a renewable energy developer acquiring both equity and, implicitly, access to the operational layer for the installations it deploys. The investor and the investee are building adjacent parts of the same value chain.

The operational gap

Solar-plus-battery installations for commercial buildings create a three-system problem. The hardware comes with monitoring software from the manufacturer, designed to track the equipment's health. Building energy management systems are optimised for reducing consumption, not for market participation. And trading interfaces are provided by energy suppliers, designed for their own workflows. None of the three is designed to make optimal real-time decisions across the full loop.

The consequences are real: when a battery fails to charge during a low-price period and discharge during a high-price period — because the trading interface gave one instruction and the BMS gave another — the asset produces less revenue than it should. When a fault develops and the hardware software logs it but the building manager never sees it, the issue compounds until it becomes a breakdown. De Bièvre speaks from experience: "We sold batteries ourselves for years, so we know exactly how fast things can go wrong when nobody's keeping watch."

The four-market bet

CIOC Energy's platform currently operates in Belgium, the Netherlands, Germany, and Romania — four markets with distinct grid structures, regulatory frameworks, and spot market rules. Operating across all four simultaneously is a complexity that gives the company depth but also makes it harder to abstract the platform into something portable.

The €3 million will fund expansion of the commercial and technical teams and, critically, direct trading access on the four energy markets — moving from interfacing with existing traders to operating as a market participant in its own right. That shift changes the business model: a company that holds its own trading licences can capture more of the value per megawatt-hour than one that routes through a third-party trader.