SMARKIA It has become the perfect travel companion for any company that wants to opt for a complete management of its energy through the use of the Artificial intelligence. The company intends to make the final leap to USA with the Opening of a subsidiary in the country.
What does the company do and what has been its evolution in these almost 15 years that has been in the market?
Smarkia, founded in León in 2011, is a SAAS platform, based on artificial intelligence (AI), with which we intend to boost the energy transition through digitalization. Through the control and remote management of devices and facilities, we reduce the energy consumption, the cost and environmental impact of all our customers. In 2022 there was a turning point with the entry of Repsol and MN8 in the company’s capital. Repsol had developed a technology at its Tech Lab Innovation Center and considered that Smarkia was perfect to value it. One of those technologies had to do with battery management. This fit MN8, one of the largest renewable companies in the US, who decided renewable generation. Currently, Repsol has 33.5% of the company and MN8 37%.
What kind of customers are they directed?
From Smarkia we can orchestrate many of the legs that are within the energy transition. We have customers throughout the spectrum starting with the renewable part and storage, such as MN8, which has more than 3 GW of power installed in almost 1,000 plants in the US, the second largest storage plant in the world in California, and we have A quite strong expertise there. We also have industrial clients in Spain as Gullón, whom we have helped save almost 30% energy with the implementation of our platform within the management of its processes. Among our commercial clients the most significant is Mercadona, for which we are managing much of its stores network in Spain and Portugal. In the case of the electric vehicle we are the real -time management platform of Mercedes high power loaders in the United States. This company has begun to deploy a network of about 4,000 high -power loaders from 350 kW of power to compete with Tesla and the tool they are using for deployment, both in the US and in Canada, is Smarkia. In the utilities part we have Repsol, which is a smart client in the residential consumption disaggregation tool. We are disaggregating all its residential customers.
In which countries are they present?
We operate in Europe and the United States, where we have more than 300 clients. More than 50% of the company’s turnover is already done in the US market. In addition, in these more than two years that we have been working with MN8, we have been able to verify that the dynamism of the projects, the size, scope, vision, etc., is much higher there and, for this reason, we are working on a Capital extension round to disembark in the United States, create a subsidiary there, create a team and be able to develop our activity in this market. If what we want is to be a world reference in digitalization of the energy transition, the future of Smarkia happens to be in the US.
Can you give us more details of this operation?
One of the things we learned when we carry out the internationalization of Smarkia by Telefónica’s hand is that you have to have a powerful physical presence at the place where you want to expand. We have been in conversations with several funds since the end of last year, many of them Americans, some of which are already quite advanced. Our premise is now the time to market. In the technology sector a year is a world and it takes much longer to go to the United States is a very large competitive disadvantage, so we are making an enormous effort to try to close this as soon as possible. The headquarters would surely fix it in Texas and I would at first direct the company in person.
Are big companies betting on AI?
Last year we made public a national study on the role that artificial intelligence applications have in the management and optimization of energy consumption. The data it shows is that only 24% of multinationals use AI in their day to day. And despite the fact that 75% of companies consider the option to hire Energy Management Systems based on AI, the study reveals that only 9% currently takes advantage of this potential. What we see is that it costs a lot to sell the concept of application of artificial intelligence because the client wants to see the results immediately and things have a timing. We lack awareness and real commitment.
What do you think of energy savings certificates and what role Smarkia plays in all this?
With the theme of the caes I have feelings found. I am a total convinced, but when you go down to reality, you begin to see the problem. The whole sector is pushing to give the best diffusion, but the 2024 figures have not been all how good they should have been. In Spain we take a lot of decisions because we always think they will make another proposal better. And that is the difference with the US. There the decisions are faster and when someone is clear that making an investment is profitable (and that with the CAES the profitability is superior), it makes it immediately. If we add to this that the resources that the Spanish administration has are limited and that the number of verifiers is low and, at certain times, they are overwhelmed, you realize that you have very ambitious objectives with very small means. Regarding the role of smarkia, we have what we call the office falls, which is a solution of extreme end where a large client or a must we can detect where there are investment opportunities that generate caes, we can help them make the diagnoses, Everything that has to do with verification measure through the platform. The platform itself, through its energy savings algorithms, is a generator of Caes per se. With the monitoring that we do of these client activities, in the future you can tell you where it will be more profitable to make the investments.
Do you think opportunities in Spain are being lost due to slowness and the type of decisions that are sometimes taken from the administration?
We present our Flexia project to the call New business models for the IDAE energy transition funded by the Next Generation funds. They took it to solve it a year and a half and, when they finally solve it, they do not grant it to us because they say that the project is self -financing, when the project is really impeccable. So you wonder what is financed in Spain with public money, projects that are not able to survive and that you know that as soon as the subsidy ends they will fall or we are trying to bet on projects that will generate more wealth and that have a possibility of internationalization? Obviously we have resorted. Therefore, the message I want to move is that what you have to do, you have to do it quickly. If there is a technology and we must develop it, the funds have to be granted already, and the administration will have to look for ways to evaluate these projects by speeding up the process.
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