Morgan Stanley's 1GT leads €49M Series E for Amber Electric

Amber Electric said on September 21, 2026 that it has closed a nearly twice oversubscribed Series E funding round it puts at $78.5 million, without naming the currency, led by 1GT, which Amber describes as Morgan Stanley's climate tech fund, with participation from existing backers Environmental Technologies Fund (ETF Partners), Innovation Victoria and E.ON. Morgan Stanley Investment Management's release the same day states the round as €49 million and describes 1GT as its private climate equity strategy. At the European Central Bank's September 21 reference rates, €49 million is about US$56.3 million and about A$78.9 million, so the two documents describe the same sum only if Amber's figure is in Australian dollars.

Amber, an energy retailer founded in Melbourne in 2017 per Morgan Stanley's release, gives customers access to real-time wholesale electricity prices and, per Amber's release, "the technology to automate their home batteries and EVs, charging when cheap renewable energy is available and earning money by discharging when prices spike." Amber says it has become "the largest residential battery automation product in the country, orchestrating more than half of automated home batteries in Australia"; Morgan Stanley's release puts it at "over 50% market share of automated batteries." Amber's September 30, 2025 release on an earlier raise described the company as "Australia's largest residential solar and battery automation provider, orchestrating more than 40% of the domestic market," and Amber's June 4, 2025 release put it at "40% of Australia's new automated home batteries." The three releases state three different bases, so the figures are not a like-for-like series.

Vikram Raju, identified in both releases as head of climate private equity investing at Morgan Stanley Investment Management and 1GT, said in Amber's release that the firm is "pleased to partner with Chris and Dan to help accelerate Amber's next phase of development" and, the same sentence continues, to "support the broader transformation of electricity systems in Australia and Europe." Morgan Stanley's release says the funding "follows the recent partnership with E.ON, one of the UK's largest energy suppliers, which also participated in the latest round."

The round follows the $45 million Amber announced on June 4, 2025, a figure that post also prints without a currency, led by ETF Partners with participation from existing backers including Square Peg, Gentrack, Rubio Impact Ventures and Breakthrough Victoria, and the A$10 million announced on September 30, 2025 (about US$7.1 million), split equally between E.ON Next UK (£2.5 million, which Amber put at A$5 million) and Virescent Ventures (A$5 million). Breakthrough Victoria's website, read on September 21, 2026, carries a banner saying "Breakthrough Victoria is becoming Innovation Victoria," the name that appears in the September 21 release's list of existing backers.

The European leg

Amber says its technology underpins Next Optimise, E.ON Next's smart energy tariff and home battery and EV automation product, which launched in March 2026 and is "now live for battery and solar households across the UK." E.ON Next's March 30, 2026 release described the company as "scaling up" the service after a pilot run under the name Next Solar Max. E.ON said the pilot's early findings "showed a boost to the savings made by households with similar solar and battery set ups on a standard variable tariff and SEG," with every household seeing some bill reduction, average savings of around £18 a month (about US$24) and some close to £100, calculated over a 61-day window from December 27, 2025 to February 24, 2026 for customers who had used the service for at least three months; its modelling shows the average household "could save close to £300 per year compared to similar households exporting solely through the Solar Export Guarantee (SEG)."

Amber says it is now releasing the next generation of the technology, including vehicle-to-grid functionality "which is letting early customers earn money by selling energy from their EV back to the grid when it's needed most." Chris Thompson, Amber's co-founder and co-CEO, said in Amber's September 21 release: "Our partnership with E.ON is already showing what's possible, and we're excited to build on that momentum with more partners across the region." In Australia, Amber runs the ARENA-backed V2G program that added the BYD Sealion 7 on September 18, 2026, with more than 50 live V2G sites and a waitlist of more than 8,000 people at that point, per Amber.

Amber's release lists the uses of the money as scaling its technology in Australia, expanding across European markets, and continuing to invest in products and infrastructure. Neither Amber's release nor Morgan Stanley's names a European market beyond the UK.

The market behind the raise

Under the Cheaper Home Batteries Program, Australian households, businesses and community organisations "can get a discount of around 30% on the upfront cost" of installing "a range of small-scale battery systems (5 kWh to 100 kWh)," for batteries connected to new or existing solar PV systems and subject to the eligibility requirements in the Renewable Energy (Electricity) Regulations 2001; the Clean Energy Regulator administers the program, per the program page of the Department of Climate Change, Energy, the Environment and Water. The page says the government announced on December 13, 2025 that it would expand the program "from original estimates of $2.3 billion to an estimated $7.2 billion over the next 4 years," in the page's own dollar figures, and that this "is expected to see more than 2 million Australians install a battery by 2030, delivering around 40 gigawatt hours of additional storage capacity." Two changes took effect on May 1, 2026, per the page: the certificate factor behind the discount now declines every six months and at a higher rate, and support tapers by system size, with the aim, in the page's words, of "maintaining around 30% discount for a range of battery systems at each capacity level."

The Clean Energy Regulator's Quarterly Carbon Market Report for the June quarter of 2026 calls Q2 2026 "a record quarter for battery installations under the Cheaper Home Batteries Program, with more than 111,000 approved batteries and 3.6 gigawatt-hours of storage capacity installed." The Prime Minister's office said on August 14, 2026 that more than 500,000 batteries had been installed under the program, more than three quarters of them in outer suburban and regional communities. It also said what it called the Australian Energy Market Operator's "most recent quarterly report" found "that home batteries are reshaping demand in our grids," with batteries supplying household use after sunset, reducing the evening peak (see the duck curve) and "putting downward pressure on bills for everyone, whether they have solar and a battery or not."

Both raises come with an unmeasured superlative about Australia. The June 2025 release called the country "the world's most advanced two-way energy grid" and tied that raise to the program, saying the capital positioned the company to scale its operations and "seize the opportunity presented as the battery market accelerates from 1 July 2025 in Australia, with the introduction of the federal government's Cheaper Home Batteries Program rebate." The September 21 release says the technology "was developed in the world's leading market for home battery uptake" and does not mention the program; neither release says by what measure.