Voltra emerges from stealth with $1.8M to launch ‘Charge,’ a Stripe-like API for EV chargers and microgrids

Waterloo-based tech startup Voltra has officially launched out of stealth with a $1.8 million pre-seed round led by Contrary, alongside Hanover Capital and Velocity Fund.

The company is launching its first product, Charge—a unified API platform built to simplify control of EV chargers, batteries, and microgrids.

The founders, Alexander Stratmoen and Aryan Afrouzi, started Voltra while studying at the University of Waterloo. They saw how today’s energy infrastructure is stuck in the past—slow-moving, closed off, and tangled in outdated systems. “Most of the energy space is focused on top-down control and infrastructure buildout to modernize our grid,” Stratmoen explains. “We believe the intelligence layer has to also be built from the bottom up.”

The Grid Is Cracking—and It’s Not Ready for What’s Coming

The North American electrical grid is under pressure like never before. We’ve come a long way since the early battles between Edison and Tesla, through the post-war boom of the 1950s and ’60s, to today’s mix of solar panels, battery storage, and nuclear microreactors. While energy generation has seen wave after wave of progress, the grid that carries that power hasn’t kept up.

More than 70% of transmission lines across the U.S. and Canada are over 25 years old. Many are operating well beyond what they were built for. At the same time, electricity demand is surging, driven by growing populations, the shift to electric vehicles, and the massive energy needs of new data centers.

Grid operators are stuck with a tough choice: either spend billions tearing up and rebuilding infrastructure over decades, or find smarter ways to manage what we already have.

Voltra is betting on the second option.

Meet Charge: Developer Tools for the Future of Energy

What they’ve built in Charge is an API platform that aims to make working with energy systems as simple as plugging into Stripe or Twilio. The team is targeting a pain point that’s held developers and energy companies back: old-school middleware, vendor lock-in, and complex proprietary controls.

“Previously, for a fleet software company, working with EV infrastructure directly would be unmanageable,” Stratmoen says. “The space is filled with complex middleware and unsustainable EV-specific business models.”

Charge brings a more flexible approach. It gives developers modern SDKs that work across vendors, protocols, and devices—allowing software companies to actually control and connect with energy assets without building everything from scratch. Early users include fleet operators, condo energy systems, and microgrid integrators.

Beyond Chargers: A Broader Infrastructure Play

Voltra’s bigger vision goes beyond EV charging. “What we’ve started with EV chargers will expand to energy storage, industrial controls, and eventually the wider distribution system,” Afrouzi says. Right now, much of that control is locked behind layers of old proprietary software. Voltra wants to crack that open—and give developers a clearer path to interface directly with energy assets.

This bottom-up approach reflects a growing shift in the industry. Tesla’s work with Autobidder, Base Power’s recent $200 million raise, and the broader push toward programmable energy infrastructure all signal a new direction. Voltra is the first to go after this by building developer tools from the start.

Why Investors Are Betting on Voltra

For Joe Malchow, founding partner at Hanover Capital and an investor in energy companies like Enphase and Archaea, the implications are much bigger than just developer tools. “The opportunity for consumers and businesses is immense, and for grid operators it’s existential,” he says. “The future grid requires Internet-style coordination and routing. Voltra was created to solve this enormous need. Success means cheaper driving for consumers, new opportunities for business, and better nodal pricing and reliability for grid operators.”

Stratmoen sums up the moment: “We’re really excited about this launch. It marks the first steps in not only fixing a broken software space but laying the groundwork for tomorrow’s energy grid.”