A Boulder startup that stepped into one of renewable energy's most stubborn financing gaps has raised $74 million to extend its reach across Africa, Asia, and Latin America, where thousands of small solar contractors still struggle to find the working capital they need before a single panel goes up.
Odyssey Energy Solutions announced Sunday that the round consisted of $27 million in equity and $47 million in debt, bringing its total capital raised to $94 million since co-founders Emily McAteer and Piyush Mathur launched the platform in 2017. The company targets a narrow but critical slice of the renewable-energy financing stack: the months before construction wraps, when installers need cash to buy equipment, pay workers, and complete builds that eventually trigger customer payments.
Most debt funds won't touch that risk. Odyssey has built a business around it.
The equity portion drew support from Broadscale Group, FMO (the Netherlands Development Finance Company), and Al Mada Ventures, alongside earlier backers Union Square Ventures, Equal Ventures, Abstract Ventures, Twelve Below, FJ Labs, MCJ Collective, and Transition Ventures. FMO's project database shows a $5 million equity investment approved on June 12, 2026.
On the debt side, British International Investment, BIO (Belgium's development finance arm), the Facility for Energy Inclusion via Cygnum Capital, and the Energy Entrepreneurs Growth Fund through Triple Jump all participated. BIO disclosed a €7 million loan to an India-focused procurement vehicle, Odyssey Energy Solutions Procure VI, though that approval date also raises questions about timing discrepancies in public filings.
Odyssey now serves more than 6,000 solar installers and engineering-procurement-construction firms spread across upward of 50 countries, according to the company. Its website lists over $3 billion in available financing capacity. The company says it has helped unlock 1.5 gigawatts of projects to date, a figure announced in early September.
The model is straightforward, if unusual in practice. Odyssey extends six- to twelve-month supply-chain credit directly to contractors, bearing construction risk that larger lenders typically sidestep. The capital cycles back as projects reach commercial operation. Last year the company launched a procurement arm to aggregate equipment orders, layering embedded credit into bulk purchases.
India has become a breakout market. According to Odyssey, its business there more than tripled over the past year, fueled by domestic manufacturing incentives and surging electricity demand tied to artificial intelligence infrastructure and data centers. The company began offering supply-chain credit in India in late April of last year. A case study published on Odyssey's site in February describes procurement support for nearly 200 megawatts of ground-mounted solar across South Asia, though the study's publication date suggests it may reflect earlier project timelines.
McAteer, who previously served as founding chief revenue officer at SunEdison Frontier Power, framed the financing gap bluntly in Sunday's announcement. "The focus of financing for distributed renewable energy has historically been on post-construction capital," she said. "That has left a significant gap upstream, where thousands of small and medium EPCs and installers lack the working capital needed to procure equipment, complete construction, and unlock customer payments."
Her co-founder Mathur brings his own pedigree: he led Simpa Networks before ENGIE acquired the company and held prior roles at Kleinwort Benson Private Equity, Deloitte, and KPMG. McAteer holds degrees from Stanford's Graduate School of Business, Harvard Kennedy School, and Brown; Mathur is a chartered accountant with an MBA from London Business School.
Odyssey first raised a $15 million Series A led by Union Square Ventures in May 2023, building on a $5.34 million seed round announced the prior September.
The competitive landscape remains fragmented. CrossBoundary Energy, which finances commercial and industrial solar portfolios across Africa, executed a $495 million framework with MIGA last June covering 20 countries. Nithio, an Africa-focused climate fintech, uses AI-driven risk analytics to unlock clean-energy capital and received a $5 million investment from EDFI ElectriFI in 2021. Solarise Africa offers energy-as-a-service and leasing for commercial customers across the continent.
But the upstream construction financing niche Odyssey occupies remains less crowded, perhaps because the risks are harder to model and the ticket sizes smaller than what institutional capital typically chases. Whether the model scales depends on how well the company can underwrite contractors it may never meet in person, in markets where credit histories are thin and project delays common.
For now, Odyssey is betting that the gap between ambition and working capital in emerging-market solar remains wide enough to justify the gamble.
