Palmetto, a clean energy marketplace and technology services platform, announced it has raised approximately $375 million to accelerate the adoption of residential solar and clean energy independence across the United States. The round was led by Social Capital, with participation from new and existing investors including ArcTern Ventures, Gaingels, Lerer Hippeau, and MacKinnon, Bennett & Co. (MKB).
Palmetto will use the funds to invest in growing its marketplace of independent contractors, as well as the technology, people, and resources to maintain – and over time grow – its overall operating efficiencies in order to expand its addressable market, the statement said.
Chris Kemper, Chairman, Founder, and CEO of Palmetto, said: “Palmetto is the first distributed energy company built from a software foundation, which enables us to scale unlike any other clean energy provider and make real progress towards our mission of mitigating climate change. I honestly believe that in the same way the cell phone fundamentally changed the telecom market, Palmetto has the opportunity to do the same to the centralized fossil fuel industry.”
Kemper added: “This is a major milestone not only for Palmetto, but for the entire clean energy sector. We remain hyper-focused on offering the best residential solar product on the market, which we aim to do through seamless execution of our unique operating model. We look forward to the next step of our evolution whereby we expand our marketplace to include other cost-saving products and services that empower homeowners to achieve energy resilience and independence.”
Chamath Palihapitiya, Founder and CEO of Social Capital, said: “Each year the energy crisis in the U.S. becomes more visible and urgent – utility companies are becoming even less reliable, climate calamities have exposed our aging infrastructure, and energy prices continue to rise. Palmetto is taking a fresh and unique approach to the residential solar model, making it easier than ever for homeowners to become energy independent, a major step towards a sustainable energy future. We are excited to back Chris and his team on their mission to solve one of the biggest existential threats of our generation.”
The company also announced that Chamath Palihapitiya and Nirav Tolia, Co-founder and former CEO of Nextdoor, have joined Palmetto’s Board of Directors. They join other directors and advisors, including Joanne Bradford (former Pinterest and SoFi), Monica Wililams (Equity Project), Francis Suarez (Mayor of Miami), Will Szczerbiak (Greycroft), Kyle Burks (STR Services), Jared Wray (Palmetto, CTO & Co-Founder), and Sean Hayes (Palmetto, Founding Team).
HrNxt.com Newsdesk has researchers and writers with an excellent domain knowledge about the talent ecosystem, and the business environment. The team keeps a tab on the latest happenings in the ecosystem to bring most relevant news and insights for our readers. You can connect with our newsdesk at newsdesk@hrnxt.com.