Illustration: Aïda Amer/Axios
Jasmine Energy this morning launched an energy trading app and marketplace that enables retail traders to buy and sell electricity from the couch.
Why it matters: The Y Combinator company tells Axios that its Robinhood-like app can accelerate climate investment by driving casual traders to obscure energy exchanges.
Flashback: Jasmine in September closed a $2.5 million seed round during Y Combinator's twice-annual demo day.
- UpHonest Capital, Cerulean Ventures, GSR, Focal VC, Collaborative Fund, and Climate Capital participated.
- The round was raised at a $22 million valuation, CEO Nathalie Capati said.
Catch up fast: It's impossible to track how individual electrons flow across an electric grid. So companies buy and sell "energy attribute credits" to represent the low-carbon power they're using or generating.
- Trading those credits has become a lucrative if esoteric market.
The latest: Jasmine launched a blockchain-backed app to draw new investors to energy credits markets.
- The app had about 5,000 members pre-launch, including institutional investors and some Fortune 500s, the startup says.
- The idea is to bring liquidity and transparency to a market that's traditionally been opaque and fragmented — much like the country's electric grid itself.
What they're saying: "If we want to replace oil, we need to operate like oil, which means including speculative markets," Capati says.
What's next: The D.C.-based startup is using the capital from its raise to in part connect with various energy credits registries across the country.
