We’re excited to share that Aurora Solar recently raised $50 million in Series B financing led by ICONIQ Capital, a leading software investment firm. We are delighted that existing investors Energize Ventures, Fifth Wall, and Pear VC also joined the round.
Not only is this a big moment for our team, but also for our customers—the thousands of solar companies that trust us to power their businesses every day. Thank you for your partnership in this journey to bring solar energy to communities all around the world.
This is also a momentous milestone for the solar industry. For a long time, solar has been considered a niche industry and this investment demonstrates that those times are over. It is a testament to all the hard work that the industry has put in over the last few decades to create a future that is powered by affordable, abundant solar energy.
Times of Change
This year’s pandemic accelerated trends that were already reshaping the solar industry, specifically solar businesses transitioning from on-site visits and door-to-door sales to remote site assessments and selling solar online. As a result of this shift, solar businesses were able to keep their doors open and the residential solar market was less severely impacted by the pandemic than initially forecasted.
We were glad that we can support the industry in this transition. There are many benefits to running your business on a software like Aurora—significantly reducing site-visits, change orders, costs, and time spent per installation project, increasing accuracy, and meeting your customer’s expectations. Consumers today are more comfortable buying big ticket items online and they’re more likely to shop around online, requiring quick response times and more customization throughout the entire “going solar” process.
Making this shift might seem daunting, but it is critical that we make it—and we’re here to help.
A Full Year
2020 was a full year for us. In early March, our software was the first to be approved by the California Energy Commission (CEC) to demonstrate compliance with the new California solar mandate. In July, we launched our first (virtual) solar summit bringing together policy and industry experts to share insights to help businesses through the pandemic and an economic downturn. We also listened to our customers and added storage design features to Aurora, allowing our customers to confidently quote solar plus storage systems. Then in October, we surpassed 4 million solar projects designed in Aurora, with the last million added in a record time of 6 months. And just earlier this month we received the Rising Star Company award at the 22nd annual S&P Global Platts Global Energy Awards.
We’re Just Getting Started
We are beyond thankful for all the solar advocates around the world and our customers who have been on this journey with us. Ultimately, our successes are your successes. We’re all in this together, and we’re just getting started!
Aurora Solar’s mission is to create a future of solar energy for all. In order for this to happen, we need to lower the soft costs of installing solar so that solar energy becomes increasingly affordable and cost competitive with fossil fuels. Hardware costs over the last decade have decreased significantly, making soft costs the last frontier to make solar widely affordable.
Software solutions, like Aurora, are key to lowering solar’s soft costs, and the faster we can transition away from fossil fuels, the faster we can create a future powered by clean energy.
Join the Movement
Our Series B funding gives us the resources to make a future powered by solar energy a reality. We are planning to expand all our teams—engineering, marketing, customer success, and product—and we need all the help we can get.
If you share our vision of the future, want to help slow global warming, work at the intersection of solar energy and technology, and work on something challenging, we invite you to join our team!
To keep up with the latest solar news, subscribe to our blog.