Odyssey raises $74M to finance solar gear before installers get paid

Why it matters

Odyssey is using a debt-heavy financing package to move beyond project-management software and fund equipment purchases directly. Underwriting and repayment performance now sit at the center of its model.

Emily McAteer and Piyush Mathur's Odyssey Energy Solutions announced on September 1 that it raised $74 million, with $27 million in equity and $47 million in debt. The structure gives Odyssey fresh corporate capital while expanding the pool of money it can put behind equipment purchases for smaller solar installers.

New equity investors include Broadscale Group, FMO and Al Mada Ventures. Union Square Ventures, Equal Ventures, Abstract Ventures, Twelve Below, FJ Labs, MCJ and Transition Ventures also participated. The debt came from British International Investment, BIO, the Facility for Energy Inclusion through Cygnum Capital, and the Energy Entrepreneurs Growth Fund through TripleJump.

Odyssey did not name a lead equity investor or provide a valuation. FMO's project disclosure records a $5 million equity investment effective June 30, 2026. FMO said the money would support Odyssey's operating expenses as the company expands across India, Africa and Latin America.

The financing advances a problem McAteer has been chasing since long before Odyssey was founded in 2017. A 2011 Fulbright fellowship took her to rural India to study solar electrification. She later joined SunEdison's Frontier Power subsidiary, where she and co-founder Cathy Zoi tried to assemble portfolios of small energy projects across India and East Africa.

In an interview with MCJ, McAteer called herself a climate "one trick pony" and said her father worked in a utility's energy-efficiency department while her mother worked at the Environmental Protection Agency. At Frontier Power, the work of sizing, financing and tracking many small projects remained fragmented and spreadsheet-heavy. SunEdison's bankruptcy helped push McAteer and Zoi toward software that could serve the wider distributed-energy market instead of owning projects themselves.

Mathur brought the operator and finance side of the thesis. Odyssey's leadership biography says he previously led Simpa Networks, an Indian solar-financing provider acquired by ENGIE, after earlier roles in private equity, consulting and accounting. His experience matters more as Odyssey moves from organizing transactions to supplying credit within them.

Debt is becoming part of the product

Odyssey's new financing expands its work in procurement and credit.

McAteer said in the financing announcement distributed-energy finance has traditionally arrived after construction. Smaller engineering, procurement and construction companies still need cash earlier to order panels, batteries and other equipment. Customer payments may arrive only after installation milestones are completed, leaving installers with signed projects they cannot build simultaneously.

Odyssey's procurement platform aggregates orders to negotiate supplier terms and embeds credit into equipment purchases. Odyssey says the procurement product, launched in 2024, has unlocked 1.5 gigawatts of projects. The $47 million debt portion of the financing gives Odyssey substantially more capital to support that activity without funding every equipment order from equity.

At least some commitments associated with the package were public before September 1. BIO's investment disclosure records a 7 million euro loan disclosed in July 2026 to Odyssey Energy Solutions Procure VI, an India-registered special-purpose vehicle fully owned by Odyssey Energy Solutions Pvt. Ltd., Odyssey's Indian subsidiary. BIO said the facility would finance equipment for distributed renewable-energy projects totaling more than 110 megawatts and producing electricity for more than 60 companies in India.

British International Investment's 2025 commitments list records a 5.5 million pound debt commitment to Odyssey Energy Solutions Procure I, Inc., an Odyssey procurement vehicle in Nigeria listed under BII's Kinetic Portfolio. The disclosure provides no additional facility details.

Odyssey has not published the interest rates, maturities, collateral or allocation of the debt facilities.

Odyssey reports a 6,000-company network

Odyssey says more than 6,000 installers and EPCs use its platform across over 50 countries, up from the more than 2,000 companies it reported when Union Square Ventures led its $15 million Series A in May 2023. Odyssey also says it facilitates access to $3.6 billion in project capital, compared with $1.3 billion at the Series A.

BIO's disclosure provides a narrower view of the activity covered by its investment: 95 projects globally, including 54 active and 41 completed projects, across 34 clients that BIO described as mostly small and medium-sized enterprises.

Odyssey also claims its India platform grew 205% over the past 12 months. The announcement does not specify whether that growth refers to users, financed volume, procurement orders, projects or revenue.

The latest financing follows the Series A and a $5.34 million seed round announced in September 2022. Odyssey says total capital raised is $94 million, a figure that combines equity funding with the new debt facilities.

A software founder takes on credit risk

Odyssey is combining functions that adjacent providers often handle separately. Nithio focuses on climate-finance underwriting and lending, while Masunga combines operating software with receivables finance. CrossBoundary Access says it raises capital for solar mini-grid portfolios, designs and builds them, and owns and operates the resulting infrastructure. Odyssey's model connects project software, equipment procurement and construction credit in one system.

That combination can give Odyssey better information about a borrower's project pipeline, equipment order, construction progress and expected customer payments. It also makes repayment performance, currency exposure and credit controls central to Odyssey's results. The software can organize the evidence for an underwriting decision; it cannot remove the risk that an installer, customer or project pays late.

McAteer and Mathur are betting that standardized data and aggregated purchasing can make smaller renewable-energy projects legible to institutional capital. The $74 million package gives Odyssey the balance-sheet capacity to test that thesis at a larger scale, particularly in India, Africa and Latin America. Its success will be measured in equipment delivered, projects completed and debt repaid, rather than the headline size of the financing network.