The company simplifies the process of getting consistent, apples-to-apples bids.
By Katie Brigham for Heatmap
With commercial electricity prices steadily climbing, many businesses and real estate owners are increasingly eager to generate and store their own power onsite, cutting their bills and making costs more predictable. But figuring out whether solar and storage can actually pencil out — and under what conditions — can be a nightmare. Ask a handful of developers for a quote and you might get a rooftop solar array from one, a ground-mounted solar and battery system from another, and a gas turbine from a third, each with its own size, price, and financing terms.
That leaves buyers comparing apples to oranges. And for businesses evaluating a portfolio of potential projects, the process gets even messier. “These are very local-centric systems. Different interconnection requirements, different permits, different suppliers,” Gareth Evans, CEO of the onsite energy planning and procurement startup Veckta, told me. “There are hundreds of solar developers in every state.” The hard part, he added, is “knowing what supplier to go with, how to ask them the right questions in the right language, in the right format, so that you’re getting consistent bids back that you can compare and contrast.”
That’s the tension San Diego-based Veckta has built its business around. And on Tuesday, the startup announced an oversubscribed $11 million Series A to scale its solution. Origin Ventures led the round, with participation from others including the climate-focused investor VoLo Earth Ventures, which led Veckta’s $3.3 million pre-seed round in 2022.
The company starts with a single input: a property address. Veckta’s software analyzes over 5,000 data points, including utility rates, grid emissions, outage risk, local equipment and construction costs, and available incentives to assess — in under a minute — whether an onsite energy project makes financial sense. That helps buyers define their needs, from system size and installation type to contract terms, and ensures that potential suppliers are bidding on the same requirements. The result is a set of comparable proposals, without the upfront cost of hiring a consultant or supply chain expert.
Veckta’s platform includes more than 3,000 vetted suppliers. As bids come in, the startup automatically compares them based on factors including the supplier’s track record, warranties, equipment offerings, compliance with foreign entity of concern requirements, and ability to leverage federal and local incentives. From there, Veckta makes its recommendations. “Supplier A is your best option if you want U.S.-made equipment with the longest warranty, best guarantee, and they’ve done these projects before,” Evans explained, by way of example. “Supplier B is disqualified because they’ve never done a project in your state.”
Out of the roughly 34,000 customer sites Veckta has analyzed, Evans said 37% would see positive returns today by installing solar panels, battery storage systems, or both. That translates to $3.1 billion in potential project value, concentrated largely in markets with high electricity rates such as the Northeast and California, and among businesses facing steep peak-demand charges. But as utility rates continue to rise and installation costs fall, he expects onsite power to become cost-competitive with the grid at “almost 100%” of sites within five years. The startup estimates that would unlock a whopping $12 billion in potential project value.
Veckta wouldn’t capture all that itself, of course. Rather, it generates revenue in two ways: buyers pay an upfront platform fee, and the winning supplier pays a success fee once a contract is signed. Evans told me the startup has been net profitable for the past year, though he would not share specifics. So far in 2026, customers have signed contracts for onsite energy projects at 128 sites. These typically range from 250 kilowatts for businesses like car dealerships and retail stores to 10 megawatts or more for manufacturing facilities, warehouses, or cold storage facilities. “That ranges from Fortune 500s right down to your individual business owner,” Evans told me.
With this latest raise, Veckta plans to expand its supplier network and grow its sales, marketing, and customer support teams. It also wants to help customers capture additional revenue streams from their onsite energy systems, such as by connecting them with demand-response programs, using batteries to provide grid services like frequency regulation, and selling renewable energy credits.
Named customers include rental car company Enterprise Mobility, real estate investment trust Regency Centers, and auto dealership group Lithia & Driveway. About 80% of the projects the platform facilitates today involve rooftop solar paired with batteries, but the company has begun to branch out.
“We’ve done waste-heat-to-energy, we’ve done EV chargers, done backup generators, and then the latest is, we’ve just finished our first pilot on roof replacements,” Evans told me. “We are firm believers that for any complex purchase that is a non-commodity that you can’t just buy off the shelf, we are best placed to help our customers competitively source those deals.”
