

You probably have one electricity supplier for your house. But these days the average household could probably buy from several such companies; it just can’t easily access the marketplace of possible suppliers. Wouldn’t it be smarter if you had an AI in your house that could purchase energy from these producers, including those within the local grid, at the best prices and at the best time of day?

That’s what the Tibber startup does in Norway, and it’s just raised a $12 million Series A funding from an iconic Silicon Valley VC.

Hailing originally from Stockholm, Tibber offers customers the ability to lower their energy bills in exactly the above manner, with the user using a simple app, and the purchasing of power is automatically done by its bots. That means Tibber is always looking for the lowest electricity prices as well as alerting customers to consume energy during the cheapest hours of the day.

The funding round was led by SF-based Founders Fund, known for their early investments in Spotify, Facebook, SpaceX, Palantir, Airbnb and Stripe. Tibber is the third investment ever in Europe for Founders Fund, which is quite something. The rest of the round came from existing investors, including Wellstreet, BKK, Petter Stordalen and RFF Vest.

Prior to this round the company had raised $3-4 million. It now plans to expand to Germany.

In a statement, Zack Hargreaves, principal at Founders Fund said: “The tools we currently use to manage our utilities are completely outdated. Tibber combines wholesale electricity prices with IoT integrations to save users an average of 20% on electricity bills. Consumers will see cost savings from simply downloading the app.”

Although Tibber only powers 40,000 homes right now, 25 percent are smart homes, where customers are able to control their power usage through Tibber-connected devices, such as electric-car charging, connected thermostats and smart plugs.

Edgeir Aksnes, CEO and founder, says all their customer growth has come from word of mouth: “With this funding round complete, we are set to further expand in the Nordics, develop our product and launch Tibber in new markets in Europe.”

Tibber has a team of 21 people and currently operates in Sweden and Norway.

Last year, Tibber launched a smart charging feature for Tesla and other electric cars and hybrids. The company claims that its solution can cut 20 percent off the charging price compared to the rest of the market.