Squire Patton Boggs has advised European venture capital funds Inven Capital, 2150 and AENU on an investment in Ember, the UK's first all-electric, intercity bus service.
The cross-border team advising on the investment was led by Corporate partners Andrea Cropley (Manchester) and Radek Janeček (Prague), assisted by associates Millie Woodruff and Grace Walker (Manchester), and senior associate Marek Hrubes (Prague).
Inven Capital is a €500 million venture capital fund focused on later-stage climate tech investments in Europe, backed by CEZ Group and European Investment Bank. 2150 is a venture capital firm investing in technology companies that seek to sustainably reimagine and reshape the urban environment, and AENU is an early-stage climate impact VC fund. They join Ember’s existing investors Contrarian Ventures and Pale blue dot.
Founded in Scotland in 2019, Ember is a tech and bus company that has built a platform that co-ordinates bus services, including monitoring vehicles and controlling chargers to selling tickets and calculating ETAs. This allows the company to use electric buses more intensively than any other operator in the world, leading to the reduction of emissions.
Andrea Cropley commented: “We are pleased to advise Inven Capital, 2150 and AENU on their investment in Ember, an exciting opportunity to build the future of public transport by tackling the challenge of electrifying the most utilized vehicles on the road.”
The transaction is the second in recent months for Inven Capital, with the firm advising the fund on the Series A investment in HYDROGRID, an Austrian developer of software for the hydropower industry.