Laki Power, a Reykjavík-based company founded in 2015, has secured €6 million in Series A funding with the NATO Innovation Fund as the lead investor, joined by ReykVC. This marks NIF's first investment in Iceland and backs a technology that extracts power from live transmission lines to operate remote monitoring equipment.

The eight-person startup already operates across four continents and counts grid operators among its customers. Despite Iceland's modest startup ecosystem, the company has attracted backing from NATO's venture arm, signalling the strategic importance of its grid resilience technology.

From grid operator challenge to patented innovation

Co-founder Óskar Valtýsson, who previously worked at Iceland's grid operator, identified a persistent problem: deploying monitoring equipment in remote transmission corridors required expensive and logistically complex power solutions. His answer was a device capable of drawing electricity directly from the high-voltage lines it monitors.

The patented technology, called PowerGRAB, can extract up to 300 watts from an active line—a tenfold improvement over conventional inductive designs, according to Laki. The harvested power runs cameras, weather sensors, and satellite communication systems without battery replacement. The company has extended this approach to drone charging, enabling what co-founder Ósvaldur Knudsen describes as the ability to "build a network of drones along the grid."

Knudsen asserts that Laki faces no direct competition at its scale: "We are really second to none; there is no competitor that can do it the way we do." While competitors like LineVision, which raised $47.6 million for optical line sensors deployed by eight major US utilities, and Gridware, which installed multi-sensor hardware on utility poles after its Series B round, operate in adjacent markets, neither draws power directly from transmission lines at the wattage Laki achieves. Most alternatives rely on batteries, solar panels, or contact-based power supplies.

NATO's strategic interest in grid resilience

For the NATO Innovation Fund, the team's preparation and market understanding proved decisive. Dr. Sander Verbrugge, a partner at NIF, explains: "What impressed us was the fact that the team had been well prepared and understood both the subject matter and the market. They were willing to share their network, and this arrangement worked well."

The technology's dual-use potential—enabling drone charging, advanced sensor deployment, and communication relay systems—strengthened NATO's interest. Verbrugge highlights the security dimension, citing the April 2025 blackout on the Iberian Peninsula, which left more than 50 million people without power for up to 18 hours and caused approximately $1.8 billion in economic losses for Spain, according to the country's CEOE business lobby. "Such simple and inexpensive devices can be of great assistance," Verbrugge notes.

Scaling beyond Iceland

Laki's current workforce stands at eight, predominantly based in Iceland with one employee in London. Knudsen identifies hiring as the immediate priority, particularly in hardware development, software engineering, and sales and marketing, as the company expands beyond its initial test deployment with Landsnet, Iceland's national grid operator. The startup already serves customers in Australia, South America, North America, and Europe.

The global power grid monitoring market reached $5.8 billion in 2025 and is projected to grow to $12.4 billion by 2034 as utilities modernise aging infrastructure and work to prevent blackouts and fires.

Verbrugge emphasises a measured approach to growth: "We are a patient kind of investor and therefore have no intention of going public in the next three years." NIF's mission platform group is already collaborating with Laki to develop a potential third product line. For Knudsen, the measure of success lies in "deploying our solutions on a large scale," with grid operators currently evaluating the technology.

Source: Tech Funding News