Xeal, the first electric vehicle (EV) charging company to develop an offline EV charging solution, announces raising a $11 million Series A led by ArcTern Ventures and Moderne Ventures, according to a press release shared with FinLedger.
The funding round included backing by a number of proptech VCs and real estate investors, including Lincoln Property Company’s LPC Ventures and Harrison Street. The company’s previous $3 million seed round was co-led by Pasadena Angels and former Microsoft executive Ramez Naam.
The company’s offline charging protocol, Apollo, is self reliant, 50x faster than typical Wi-Fi networks and enables Smart Home IoT capabilities without the need for expensive data infrastructure or internet connection.
While creating the first offline charging solution is impressive enough, Xeal co-founder Zander Isaacson says the company has much loftier goals.
“Our goal is, we really want to sell the industry forward, and go from 1% to 100% and mass adoption. We need to put this in every single location where people need it,” Isaacson said.
So where are the places where people need electric vehicle charging? Isaacson says that the popular misconception, that you charge your car like you fuel your gas car, is not true. Instead, he says that the majority of charging takes place at home, leading Xeal to focus on providing charging infrastructure for multifamily apartments and commercial workplaces.
Focusing Xeal’s revenue on real estate
In order to further that goal, the company also announced hiring real estate veteran Eric Roseman as its Chief Revenue Officer (CRO), alongside a number of new high-profile real estate partners.
Roseman previously served as VP of Lincoln Property Company, and giving Xeal real estate industry expertise and wider access to partnerships and endorsements.
“As Lincoln Property Company is an existing client of ours, we are thrilled to work with them and to have their support—we’re so excited to strengthen this relationship by having Eric on board our team,” Isaacson stated in the release, telling FinLedger that he had originally asked Roseman to join the company as an advisor a year and a half ago through LinkedIn.
“He agreed to be our advisor, and after a year of working together, expanding our real estate partner community and really seeing the AEC industry, it was good validation for him to be ready to join full time,” Isaacson said.
“So for us, it’s not just about having this amazing, well-versed person from the industry, but also the validation that electric vehicles are here today and that we have the right framework to make it to longevity.”
Xeal, founded by Isaacson and CTO Nikhil Bharadwaj, also announced plans to open a U.S. headquarters in New York City, in order to increase accessibility for future real estate clients and scale electric vehicle infrastructure to the East Coast.
“It’s the idea that the other side of country is ready to move forward, and we want to make sure that we’re continuously accelerating and not staying on one side where we’re already welcomed,” Isaacson said.
In other recent fintech news, multifamily mortgage proptech Fulcrum Lending announced an exclusive partnership with commercial real estate leader Northmarq. Curbio also raised $65 million for its pre-sale renovation model.