Swedish electric and autonomous truck company Einride has agreed to acquire EV charging startup Flipturn in a deal for all shares worth $38 million.
The acquisition – Einride’s first as a public company – will expand its EV charging ecosystem as it works to scale its electric truck business. The deal is expected to close this month. Flipturn, which employs 17 people, will continue to operate with the same team, a company spokesperson confirmed.
Founded in 2022, Flipturn has raised $15.5 million in venture capital to build an EV charging software platform that can communicate with any EV charger via the Open Charge Point Protocol, the industry standard for communication between EV chargers and management systems. The software monitors the health of charging infrastructure, pulls data such as vehicle battery levels, driving history and routes to help companies better manage charging, and integrates with solar and energy storage systems.
Einride CEO Roozbeh Charli said “the acquisition is a decisive step in our US scaling strategy.” The deal will also make Einride a more vertically integrated company, allowing it to offer customers not only electric trucks but also the charging software needed to run them more efficiently and reliably.
This is an attractive and potentially impactful step for prospective customers who want to add electric big rigs to their fleets but may be afraid to do so.
Einride is perhaps best known for its unusual pod-like autonomous trucks without a cable. But its biggest revenue driver is its fleet of 200 heavy-duty electric trucks, which it operates for the likes of Heineken, PepsiCo and Carlsberg Sweden in Europe, North America and the United Arab Emirates.
The company, which merged with a blank check company and debuted on the Nasdaq in June, recently landed Amazon as a client. Amazon is not buying Einride’s trucks. Instead, Einride owns and manages the trucks—through its own Saga AI software—which can be used by drivers on Amazon’s Relay freight network. Launched in 2017, Relay is an app that truckers use to book transportation gigs with Amazon.
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